He felt changed, but there was no one to tell.

…my Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have.

I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.

There are many ways of writing badly about painting... There is an 'appreciative' language of threadbare, not inaccurate, but overexposed and irritating words... the language of the schools which 'situates' works and artists in schools and movements... novelists and poets [that] see paintings as allegories of writing.

Literary critics make natural detectives.

The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.

They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed. One night they fell asleep, side by side... He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.