Fame and secrecy are the high and low ends of the same fascination.

Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?' What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing

People say great art is immortal. I say there's something mortal in it. It carries a glimpse of death.

The writer is driven by his conviction that some truths aren't arrived at so easily, that life is still full of mystery, that it might be better for you, Dear Reader, if you went back to the Living section of your newspaper because this is the dying section and you don't really want to be here.

Before pop art, there was such a thing as bad taste. Now there's kitsch, schlock, camp, and porn.

the instant he knew he loved her, she slipped down his body and out of his arms

The difference between the world of pictures and the world of printed matter is extraordinary and hard to define. A picture is like the masses: a multitude of impressions. A book on the other hand, with its linear advance of words and characters seems to be connected to individual identity.