1. “A possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.”
2. “Each man kills the thing he loves.”
3. “A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although… he may be permitted to be an intellectual.”
4. “As we grow older, the memories of early life brighten, those of maturity and senescence grow dim and confused.”
5. “All art preserves mysteries which aesthetic philosophers tackle in vain.”
6. “I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.”
7. “Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”
8. “Every dogma has its day.”
9. “Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate.”
10. “The practice of fiction can be dangerous: it puts ideas into the head of the world.”
11. “When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.”
12. “With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry.”
13. “I conclude that there is as much sense in nonsense as there is nonsense in sense.”
14. “Life’s only choosing when to die. Life’s a big postponement because the choice is so difficult. It’s a tremendous relief not to have to choose.”
15. “Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.”
16. “We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.”
17. “Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.”
18. “it is inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.”
19. “Sanity is a handicap and liability if you’re living in a mad world.”
20. “I start at the beginning, go on to the end, then stop.”
21. “Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.”
22. “Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.”
23. “I didn’t think; I experimented.”
24. “Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets.”
25. “All novels are experimental.”
26. “The writer’s life seethes within but not without.”
27. “Blessed tree and blessed birds, that were to be neither saved or damned.”
28. “The downtrodden are the great creators of slang.”
29. “Ignorance and poverty are the best condiments for the great feast of the world, but the inexperienced and poor are never invited to it.”
30. “To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.”
