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.

Things are not what they seem.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

Literary critics make natural detectives.

There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.

I watch a lot of sport on television. I only watch certain sports, and I only watch them live - I don't think I've ever been able to watch a replay of a match or game of which the result was already decided. I feel bound to cheat and look up what can be looked up.

It is good for a man to invite his ghosts into his warm interior, out of the wild night, into the firelight, out of the howling dark.