If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph.

Writing cannot be done in a state of desirelessness.

Biography is the medium through which the remaining secrets of the famous dead are taken from them and dumped out in full view of the world. The biographer at work, indeed, is like the professional burglar, breaking into a house, rifling through certain drawers that he has good reason to think contain the jewelry and money, and triumphantly bearing his loot away.

I was always trying to take art photographs, but the most interesting pictures were the snapshots. The artsy pictures were boring, always.

This is what it is the business of the artist to do. Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.

Fidelity to the subject's thought and to his characteristic way of expressing himself is the sine qua non of journalistic quotation.

Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments. The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and ‘the public’s right to know’; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living.