"Beckett’s pessimism makes Greene’s pessimism look amateurish."

"Charm, as Goethe said, is the dead green bug on the golden leaf of occasion."

"To say that the publishing world is not interested in literature is to overstate it. They are extremely interested in…"

"I have said this too many times to make it interesting even to myself, but the principle of collage is one of the cen…"

"Any fool can cry wolf; to cry sheep is inspired, the work of a subtle, contradancing mind."

"...he wouldn’t know what to do with a moral if handed one by the archangel Michael on a flaming sword."

"It is well to be simple once in a while."

"...there is a realm of possible knowledge which can be reached by artists, which is not susceptible of mathematical v…"

"Every writer in the country can write a beautiful sentence, or a hundred. What I am interested in is the ugly sentenc…"

"We are all engaged in looting the past. (Only the greatest geniuses manage to steal from the future.)"