Ideally, a book of letters should be published posthumously. The advantages are obvious: the editor enjoys a free hand, and the author enjoys a perfect hiding place - the grave, where he is impervious to embarrassments and beyond the reach of libel. I have failed to cooperate with this ideal arrangement. Through some typical bit of mismanagement, I am still alive, and the book has had to adjust to that awkward fact.

A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist - nothing shields him from the world's gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix thing…

The essayist ... can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter - philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, con…

Sailors have an expression about the weather: they say the weather is a great bluffer. I guess the same is true of our human society - things can look dark, th…

Biography is one of the new terrors of death.

One of my big fears in life is that I'm gonna die, you know, and my parents are gonna come to clean out my apartment, find that porno wing I've been adding ont…

And all her shining keys will be took from her, and her cupboards opened; and little things a' didn't wish seen, anybody will see; and her wishes and ways will…