Things are not what they seem.

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

I was no good at being a child.

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

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.

The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended.

Good writing is always new.