We find our calling or it finds us, and it's a sin against the fates not to use your talent when you have it.

Pleasure is terrifying because it breaks down the boundaries between people. Embracing passion means living with fear.

Sex just as a drive, as a hormonal drive, is not very interesting.

A concern with 'public morality' is - if not the last refuge of a scoundrel - the first foray of the fascist.

I do believe that in every age there are people whose consciousness transcends their own time and that these people, whether fictional or historical, are those with whom we most closely identify and those about whom we most enjoy reading.

It is the artists who make the true value of the world, though at times they may have to starve to do it. They are like earthworms, turning up the soil so things can grow, eating dirt so that the rest of us may eat green shoots.

Images are ... a kind of emotional shorthand.