Александрийский квартет. В двух томах

Art occurs at the point where a form is sincerely honoured by an awakened spirit.

Dear D.H.L. so wrong, so right, so great, may his ghost breathe on us all!

They were past speech and reflection — the diminished figures of an unforgotten, unregretted past, infinitely dear now because irrecoverable.

And here his sense of duty, like ill-fitting shoes, began to pinch him at every step.

Heartbeats are mercifully inaudible to anyone but oneself.

To escape — always to escape…. The desire of a writer to be alone with himself — ‘the writer, most solitary of human animals’;...

‘My God, am I slowly becoming
irresistible to myself?’

For the artist, I think, as for the public, no such thing as art exists; it only exists for the critics and those who live in the forebrain. Artist and public simply register, like a seismograph, an electromagnetic charge which can’t be rationalized. One only knows that a transmission of sorts goes on, true or false, successful or unsuccessful, according to chance.

Are we still beset by the doleful dream of the Arabian Nights, fathered on us by three generations of sexually disoriented Victorians whose subconscious reacted wholeheartedly to the thought of more than one legal wife?

Are we still beset by the doleful dream of the Arabian Nights, fathered on us by three generations of sexually disoriented Victorians whose subconscious reacted wholeheartedly to the thought of more than one legal wife?