Well chaps first I'd like to say a few vile things more or less at random, not only because it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it.

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.

One mistake is all they see.

The faculty of continual transformation... is a profound expression of the dynamic character of the mind

Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes.

The US has not imposed democracy in Yemen, its people have.

Photographing is an emotional thing, a graceful thing. Photography allows me to wander with a purpose.

Let me do my work each day, and if the darkened hours of despair overcome me, may I not forget the strength that comforted me in the desolation of other times.

I love being onstage and I love to perform. To be honest with you, I'm more comfortable performing than I am in an everyday situation, which I can't quite explain.

It takes more than a wise man to keep track of a foolish woman.

I'd rather call prose poems something else, for clarity - something like "poetic prose," prose that contains a quality of poetry, but not poems.

Film is a collective experience, as you know.