Young girls are sad. They like to be; it makes them feel strong.

...it is not possible to create the opposite of what one has always known, simply because the opposite is believed to be desired. Human beings need what they already know, even horrors.

You are safe with me." "I am not at all safe, with you. But I have no desire to be elsewhere.

I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.

Harm can come about without will or action. But will and action can avert harm.

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.

I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.