"

I sometimes say that I don't make anything up - obviously that's not true. But I am uninterested in writers who say that everything comes out of the i...more

"

You can write about other people and their ideas and life without having lived it, but even your perception of that is going to be colored by what you...more

"

I love to write about Nabokov and also to think about him. I love his attitude that he is incomparable, his lofty judgments and general scorn of other...more

"

In a certain sense, a writer is an exile, an outsider, always reporting on things, and it is part of his life to keep on the move. Travel is natural.

"

Now they are lovers. The first, wild courses are ended. They have founded their domain. A satanic happiness follows.

"

But knowledge does not protect one. Life is contemptuous of knowledge; it forces it to sit in the anterooms, to wait outside. Passion, energy, lies: t...more

"

...alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life--it was ...more

"

One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards.Why is it so difficult to assemble ...more