Great writers arrive among us like new diseases – threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings And some are treasured for their markings – They cause the eyes to melt Or the body to shriek without pain.

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it.

Great writers arrive among us like new diseases - threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.

I used to carry a copy of Ulysses with me everywhere just in case I was knocked down by a bus. It seemed more important than having clean underwear.

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings And some are treasured for their markings - They cause the eyes to melt Or the body to shriek without pain.

Great writers arrive among us like new diseases threatening, powerful, impatient for patients to pick up their virus, irresistible.

In the morning, when she walked to the consulate, carefully watching her sandals on the pavement, she glanced up and saw a Negro wearing a stack of panama hats. Maybe twelve. She never forgot the bandoeon of brims, the perfect stutter of hat.

Begin with the soft smelted upturned heart-shaped mouth made for smiling a smile kept for kindness, tenderness, incapable of malice. Am I going too fast for you?The almond eyes see out through their sleepy epicanthic fold. Trusting and calm, if a flicker from slowness, a further flicker from stupidity.Settled in slow-motion beauty, heart-breaking beauty.

In his autobiography Stravinsky relates that the first music he remembers was made by a peasant, working his hand in his armpit to produce a rhytmic farting.