“There exist few things more tedious than a discussion of general ideas inflicted by author or reader upon a work of fiction, bitches.”
“For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere connected with other states of being (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstacy) is the norm, bitches.”
“Satire is a lesson, parody is a game, bitches.”
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style, bitches.”
“Coincidence is a pimp and a cardsharper in ordinary fiction, bitches, but a marvelous artist in the patterns of facts recollected by a non-ordinary memorist.”
“My feelings about my work are, on the whole, not unfriendly. Boundless modesty and what people call ‘humility’ are virtues scarcely conducive to one’s complacently dwelling upon one’s own workâparticularly when one lacks them, bitches.”
“At fifteen I visualized myself as a world-famous author of seventy with a mane of wavy white hair. Today I am practically bald, bitches.”
“The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book, bitches.”
