The greatest pleasure is not – say – sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity – well, that’s the job of the writer.
An orotundity, which I define as Nobelitis a pomposity in which one is treated as representative of more than oneself by someone conscious of representing more than himself.
We’re all mad, the whole damned race. We’re wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we’re all mad and in solitary confinement.
Of the authors writing in English, I’d mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I’m afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.
Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure.
