Rome Was A Poem Pressed Into Service

Travel Is Like Adultery: One Is Always Tempted To Be Unfaithful To One's Own Country. To Have Imagination Is Inevitably To Be Dissatisfied With Where You Live. There Is In Men, As Peter Quennell Said, "a Centrifugal Tendency." In Our Wanderlust, We Are Lovers Looking For Consummation.

The Epic Implications Of Being Human End In More Than This: We Start Our Lives As If They Were Momentous Stories, With A Beginning, A Middle And An Appropriate End, Only To Find That They Are Mostly Middles.

Sex Almost Always Disappoints Me In Novels. Everything Can Be Said Or Done Now, And That's What I Often Find: Everything, A Feeling Of Generality Or Dispersal. But In My Experience, True Sex Is So Particular, So Peculiar To The Person Who Yearns For It. Only He Or She, And No One Else, Would Desire So Very Much That Very Person Under Those Circumstances. In Fiction, I Miss That Sense Of Terrific Specificity.

Either A Writer Doesn't Want To Talk About His Work, Or He Talks About It More Than You Want.

A Book Is Meant Not Only To Be Read, But To Haunt You, To Importune You Like A Lover Or A Parent, To Be In Your Teeth Like A Piece Of Gristle.