An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books. – Samuel Butler
A genius can never expect to have a good time anywhere, if he is a genuine article, but America is about the last place in which life will be endurable at all for an inspired writer of any kind. – Samuel Butler
Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons. – Samuel Butler
It is a wise tune that knows its own father, and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents. – Samuel Butler
The surrealists, and the modern movement in painting as a whole, seemed to offer a key to the strange postwar world with its threat of nuclear war. The dislocations and ambiguities, in cubism and abstract art as well as the surrealists, reminded me of my childhood in Shanghai. – J. G. Ballard