Actually he was a pessimist, and, like all pessimists, a ridiculously unobservant man. - Vladimir Nabokov

what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art

All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.

I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust