22 quotes found
“America takes her writers too seriously.”
“There are other things to a woman than taking her to bed.”
“If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”
“Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way.”
“I am too old a hand to be put off pleasure by even the certain prospect of not enjoying it.”
“Yevgeny Yevtushenko: 'You atheist?'"Kingsley Amis: 'Well, yes, but it's more that I hate him.”
“Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosop...”
“Death has this much to be said for it:You don't have to get out of bed for it.Wherever you happen to beThey bring it to youfree.”
“... all his faces were designed to express rage or loathing. Now that something had happened which really deserved a face, he had none to celebrate it with. As a kind of token, he made his Sex Life...”
“When the bishop farted we were amused to hear about it. Should the ploughboy find treasure we must be told. But when the ploughboy farts... er... keep it to yourself.”
“Then, Patrick, you do feel it too? You do feel ... something? It would be so bleak if you felt nothing. That's what scares women, you know.''I do know, and you needn't be scared. I feel something a...”
“Jake did a quick run-through of women in his mind, not of the ones he had known or dealt with in the past few months of years so much as all of them: their concern with the surface of things, with ...”
“Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.”
“A man's sexual aim, he had often said to himself, is to convert a creature who is cool, dry, calm, articulate, independent, purposeful into a creature that is the opposite of these; to demonstrate ...”
“It's never pleasant to have one's unquestioning beliefs put in their historical context, as I know from experience, I can assure you.”
“Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay spra...”
“education is one thing and instruction, however worthy, necessary and incidentally or monetarily educative, another.”
“Bowen looked nervously about for peasants. It would be unendurable if they all turned out to be full of instinctive wisdom and natural good manners and unself-conscious grace and a deep, articulate...”
“I thought to myself how much more welcome a faculty the imagination would be if we could tell when it was at work and when not.”
“To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to m...”
