its badness is so potent that it seems to undermine the very idea of literature, to expose the whole endeavour of making art out of language as essentially and irredeemably fraudulent

The culture of the Epic Fail, in its rituals of comic sacrifice, is a culture of sublimated predation.

How can we expect fate to let a righteous cause prevail when there is hardly anyone who will give himself up undividedly to a righteous cause?

...there is no map of the soul because we make it up as we go...

I am beginning to worry that my speech is becoming a rather incomprehensible mixture of a Victorian woman, an Australian Beach Bum and a Laddish city boy

Remember, man does not live on bread alone: sometimes he needs a little buttering up.

President Obama, by the way, has set a Guinness World Record as the fastest person to get a million Twitter followers. Obama now has as many followers as the Republicans have presidential candidates.

You have to build up a credibility before the support comes to you.

All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.

The only way out is through.

The problem with holding a grudge is that your hands are then too full to hold onto anything else.

Nothing is so stifling as symmetry. Symmetry is boredom, the quintessence of mourning. Despair yawns. There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering - a hell of boredom.