Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too ''personal'' style.

The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.

No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.

When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all -- isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth.

God bless the USA, so large, so friendly, and so rich.

Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.

A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.

You have to see the sex act comically, as a child.

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.