Instant gratification is not as good as that gratification which comes dripping slow, over the sere seasons.

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.

No matter how they abuse you toleration is how you abuse yourself.

But there's a juicy artery in your groin, " he said after a pause to regroup, his voice as slithery as a snake on a slide."Don't you talk dirty, " I told him. "I won't listen to that.

God is the source of life, wealth and honour. Live life for His glory.

Churchgoers are like coals in a fire. When they cling together, they keep the flame aglow; when they separate, they die out.

Trends, like horses, are easier to ride in the direction they are going.

We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.

No matter how stark the reality, a human being fits it into a narrative that is palatable.

I'm African American / I'm African / I'm black as the moon.

And everywhere girls, tumbling from trees like orange blossoms and hitting the earth with sickening thuds. They crack open.

All mathematics is tautology.