I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.

Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. Theyve been a laboratory for everybody.

The not-knowing is crucial to art, is what permits art to be made. Without the scanning process engendered by not-knowing, without the possibility of having the mind move in unanticipated directions, there would be no invention.

I don’t think you can talk about progress in art—movement, but not progress.

We are what we have been told about ourselves. We are the sum of the messages we have received. The true messages. The false messages.

Succeed! It has been done, and with a stupidity that can astound the most experienced.

The self cannot be escaped, but it can be, with ingenuity and hard work, distracted.