Anyone who has attempted to create knows the hellishness of it, which consists in the final inescapability from it. Knows that anything, however deadly humdrum to drug the senses, is preferable to it. Knows the gigantic effort to get started on the boundless, unwieldy, shapeless material; the forest of hesitations; of what to keep and what to throw out; the running-out terror and reluctance in one of finishing.
anybody who drinks seriously is poor: so poor, poor, extra poor, me.
Anybody who thinks there is any vague chance of adult exchange with a child is up the spout; and would be much less disappointed if they recognized the chasm unbridgeably dividing them.
money ... is only important when you have none; and though it may not be everything, it goes a very long way towards blocking up the winter draft of age.
Love can bear anything better than ridicule.
I don't trust sentimentality in men; it goes with tyranny; you can't have one without the other.
[On journalists:] They are the scavengers of society who, possessing no guts of their own, tear out the guts of celebrities. They have the sycophantic, false enthusing gush of maiden aunts: who are accustomed to being trampled on doormats.
There is a great gulf between the really creative person and normal people. The totally creative person does not have the rest of his life in proper proportion.
[On journalists:] They are as disruptive a menace to the public body: as grating turds in the intestines are to the private body.
[On journalists:] ... however lyingly libellous they may be: nobody can seriously hurt the reputation of a Great person. If he is hurt: he is not Great. They can but scratch at his skin with their mice nails.
There is, happily, no limit to the faith of human nature in believing what it wants to believe.
