Every good and worthwhile thing stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger, and must be fought for.

I am convinced that, except in a few extraordinary cases, one form or another of an unhappy childhood is essential to the formation of exceptional gifts.

If a man has no vices, he's in great danger of making vices about his virtues, and there's a spectacle.

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

Marriage is a bribe to make the housekeeper think she's a householder.

Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head.