There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defense-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream.
|
Never would it occur to a child that a sheep, a pig, a cow or a chicken was good to eat, while, like Milton's Adam, he would eagerly make a meal off fruits, nuts, thyme, mint, peas and broad beans which penetrate further and stimulate not only the appetite but other vague and deep nostalgias. We are closer to the Vegetable Kingdom than we know; is it not for man alone that mint, thyme, sage, and rosemary exhale crush me and eat me! -- for us that opium poppy, coffee-berry, tea-plant and vine perfect themselves? Their aim is to be absorbed by us, even if it can only be achieved by attaching themselves to roast mutton.
|
Civilization is an active deposit which is formed by the combustion of the present with the past. Neither in countries without a Present nor in those without a Past is it to be encountered. Proust in Venice, Matisse's birdcages overlooking the flower market at Nice, Gide on the seventeenth-century quais of Toulon, Lorca in Granada, Picasso by Saint-Germain-des-Pr?s: there lies civilization and for me it can exist only under those liberal regimes in which the Present is alive and therefore capable of assimilating the Past.
|
The dread of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married.
|
Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable.
|
All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
|
I shall christen this style the Mandarin, since it is beloved by literary pundits. It is the style of all the writers whose tendency is to make their language convey more than they mean to and more than they feel. It is the style of most artists and all humbug.
|
When writers meet they are truculent, indifferent, or over-polite. Then comes the inevitable moment. A shows B that he has read something of B s. Will B show A? If not, then A hates B, if yes, then all is well. The only other way for writers to meet is to share a quick pee over a common lamp-post.
|
A mistake which is commonly made about neurotics is to suppose that they are interesting. It is not interesting to be always unhappy, engrossing with oneself, malignant and ungrateful, and never quite in touch with reality.
|
I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an air hole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.
|
Our memories are card indexes consulted, and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
|
The English masses are lovable: they are kind, decent, tolerant, practical and not stupid. The tragedy is that they are too many of them, and that they are aimless, having outgrown the servile functions for which they were encouraged to multiply. One day these huge crowds will have to seize power because there will be nothing else for them to do, and yet they neither demand power nor are ready to make use of it; they will learn only to be bored in a new way.
|
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be read once.
|
Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph -- green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree.
|
We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in terms of a la...
|
The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence.
|
There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.
|
Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
|
Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether.
|
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice journalism what will be grasped at once.
|
The civilization of one epoch becomes the manure of the next.
|
What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
|
Except for poverty, incompatibility, opposition of parents, absence of love on one side and of desire to marry on both, nothing stands in the way of our happy union.
|
Hate is the consequence of fear we fear something before we hate it a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise.
|
As repressed sadists are supposed to become policemen or butchers so those with irrational fear of life become publishers.
|
Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first call promising.
|
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice journalism what will be read once.
|
Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.
|
The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.
|
Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
|