There Is No Pain Equal To That

It Is A Mistake To Expect Good Work From Expatriates For It Is Not What They Do That Matters But What They Are Not Doing.

Civilization Is An Active Deposit Which Is Formed By The Combustion Of The Present With The Past. Neither In Countries Without A Present Nor In Those Without A Past Is It To Be Encountered. Proust In Venice, Matisse's Birdcages Overlooking The Flower Market At Nice, Gide On The Seventeenth-century Quais Of Toulon, Lorca In Granada, Picasso By Saint-germain-des-prés: There Lies Civilization And For Me It Can Exist Only Under Those Liberal Regimes In Which The Present Is Alive And Therefore Capable Of Assimilating The Past.

Failure On The Other Hand Is Infectious. The World Is Full Of Charming Failures (for All Charming People Have Something To Conceal, Usually Their Total Dependence On The Appreciation Of Others) And Unless The Writer Is Quite Ruthless With These Amiable Footlers, They Will Drag Him Down With Them.

When We Have Ceased To Love The Stench Of The Human Animal, Either In Others Or In Ourselves, Then Are We Condemned To Misery, And Clear Thinking Can Begin.

There Is No Pain Equal To That Which Two Lovers Can Inflict On One Another.