Life Is, Of Course, Terrible.

Immortality Makes Sense Only When The Individual Soul Can Be Thought Of As Merging Into A Great Collective Mush Of Sainthood. If We Take Anything With Us Into The Next World, It Is Not What Survives In The Memories Of Our Relicts.

But What I Do I Do Because I Like To Do.

It Seems Priggish Or Pollyannaish To Deny That My Intention In Writing The Work Was To Titillate The Nastier Propensities Of My Readers. My Own Healthy Inheritance Of Original Sin Comes Out In The Book And I Enjoyed Raping And Ripping By Proxy. It Is The Novelist’s Innate Cowardice That Makes Him Depute To Imaginary Personalities The Sins That He Is Too Cautious To Commit For Himself.

A Haydn Symphony Had A Meaning For The Social Group That Listened To It. A Mahler Symphony Had A Meaning For The Man Who Composed It. Here Is The Difference Between The Classical And Romantic Attitudes To Art.

I Mean, There's Little Enough In This Life, Really, And You Only Find It Worth Living For The Odd Moments, And If You Think You're Going To Have Those Odd Moments Again, Then It Makes Life Wonderful And Have A Meaning.