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

How can you be alienated without first having been connected?

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.

Maybe writing can't be taught, but editing can be taught—prayer, fasting and self-mutilation.

I believe that because I had obtained a wife who was made up of wife-signs (beauty, charm, softness, perfume, cookery) I had found love.

Any genuine work of art generates new work.

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