Food ... is the topmost taper on the golden candelabrum of existence.

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.

They can march for days without eating. They impregnate every schoolgirl they meet.

Every man needs a place to go to.

The horrifying thing is that nearly half of America seems in synch with xenophobia and race-baiting.

Our responsibility as citizens is to keep doing our part.

One good act of vengeance deserves another.

... i didn't fall in love of course it's never up to you but she was walking back and forth and i was passing through

I am fairly optimistic about the disillusionment that produces homogeneity in general. The films that succeed in [theaters] are fairly homogeneous in terms of narrative and vision of the world.

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

Birth control that really works - every night before we go to bed we spend an hour with our kids.

Offices are not powerful because they exist; men make them so. Rights are not honored because they exist; men compel their recognition.