There is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and to perform

Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.

Experience is a private, very largely speechless affair.

The moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

And love will simply have no choice but to go into battle with space and time, and furthermore, to win.

When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.

Hatred is always self hatred, and there is something suicidal about it.