Civilised My Syphilised Yarbles.

One Goes On Writing Partly Because It Is The Only Available Way Of Earning A Living. It Is A Hard Way And Highly Competitive. My Heart Drops Into My Bowels When I Enter A Bookshop And See How Fierce The Competition Is...there Is Also A Privier Reason For Pushing On, And That Is The Hopeless Hope That Someday That Intractable Enemy Language Will Yield To The Struggle To Control It... Mastery Never Comes, And One Serves A Lifelong Apprenticeship. The Writer Cannot Retire From The Battle; He Dies Fighting.

Blessed Tree And Blessed Birds, That Were To Be Neither Saved Nor Damned.

A Man Can Write One Book That Can Be Great, But This Doesn't Make Him A Great Writer-just The Writer Of A Great Book. . . I Think A Writer Has To Extend Very Widely, As Well As Plunge Very Deep, To Be A Great Novelist.

If You Expect The Worst From A Person You Can Never Be Disappointed.

What Critics Often Ask For Is The Impossible, Though This May Be A Salutary Means Of Extending The Borders Of Art.