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… - Cyril Connolly

While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.

When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized.

Both my happiness and unhappiness I owe to the love of pleasure; of sex, travel, reading, conversation (hearing oneself talk), food, drink, cigars and lying in warm water.