Every decoding is another encoding.

to read is to surrender oneself to an endless displacement of curiosity and desire from one sentence to another, from one action to another, from one level of a text to another. The text unveils itself before us, but never allows itself to be possessed and instead of trying to possess it we should take pleasure in its teasing

Paraphrase, in the sense of summary, is as indispensable to the novel-critic as close analysis is to the critic of lyric poetry. The natural deduction is that novels are paraphrasable whereas poems are not. But this is a false deduction because close analysis is itself a disguised form of paraphrase.

Language is the net that holds thought trapped within a particular culture. But if one could only strike the ball with sufficient force, with perfect timing, it would perhaps break through the netting, continue on its course, never fall to earth, but go into orbit around the world.

I never did like working out - it bears the same relationship to real sport as masturbation does to real sex

Information is the religion of the modern world.

It's the only thing that keeps me going these days, travelling. Changes of scene, changes of faces

Walt Whitman, he who laid end to end words never seen in each other's company before outside of a dictionary.

Jogging, I believe they call it. It seems to be an epidemic psychological illness afflicting Americans these days. A form of masochism, like the flagellantes in the Middle Ages.

Perhaps that's what we're all looking for - desire undiluted by habit.

I respect a man who can recognize a quotation. It's a dying art.

Four times, under our educational rules, the human pack is shuffled and cut - at eleven-plus, sixteen-plus, eighteen-plus and twenty-plus - and happy is he who comes top of the deck on each occasion, but especially the last. This is called Finals, the very name of which implies that nothing of importance can happen after it.