It's a terrible poison, writing.

I don't like gurus. I don't like people who ask you to follow or believe. I like people who ask you to think independently.

I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.

A beautiful woman, Simone Weil said, seeing herself in the mirror, knows "This is I." An ugly woman knows with equal certainty, "This is not I." Maud knew this neat division represented an over-simplification. The doll-mask she saw had nothing to do with her, nothing.

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.

Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilisers.

You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.