Doubt is a necessary precondition tomeaningful action. Fear is the great mover in the end.

I don't think you can talk about progress in art - movement, but not progress. You can speak of a point on a line for the purpose of locating things, but it's a horizontal line, not a vertical one.

The writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do... Writing is a process of dealing with not-knowing, a forcing of what and how.

The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.

Endings are elusive, middles are nowhere to be found, but worst of all is to begin, to begin, to begin.

Any genuine work of art generates new work.

I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.

Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one's situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are.

The death of God left the angels in a strange position.

We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages.

The privileged classes can afford psychoanalysis and whiskey. Whereas all we get is sermons and sour wine. This is manifestly unfair. I protest, silently.

Sometimes I feel so alone in the world. A tiny speck of nothing in a sea of emptiness.

We do not disappear without a trace. We leave a wake that never quite disappears, a gash in time that we so laboriously leave behind us.

The most offensive is not their lying - one can always forgive lying - lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth - what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying.

Reading means borrowing.

My father went into the armed service and I never saw my mother - I don't know what happened to her.

I'm going to do everything I can to be the best president I can be for all America.

Art does not imitate life. Art is much more powerful than that. Art brings life back. And it does it by exposing the secrets we all carry inside.

Sometimes heroism is nothing more than patience, curiosity, and a refusal to panic.

We may stumble and fall but shall rise again; it should be enough if we did not run away from the battle.

Unless you remove the weeds, a good crop will be ruined.