I always thought old age would be a writer’s best chance. Whenever I read the late work of Goethe or W. B. Yeats I had the impertinence to identify with it. Now, my memory’s gone, all the old fluency’s disappeared. I don’t write a single sentence without saying to myself, ‘It’s a lie!’ So I know I was right. It’s the best chance I’ve ever had.

Words are the clothes thoughts wear.

It is suicide to be abroad. But what it is to be at home, ... what it is to be at home? A lingering dissolution.

In the name of Bacon will you chicken me up that egg.Shall I swallow cave-phantoms?