Analysts keep having to pick away at the scab that the patient tries to form between himself and the analyst to cover over his wounds. The analyst keeps the surface raw, so that the wound will heal properly.

Poets and novelists and playwrights make themselves, against terrible resistances, give over what the rest of us keep safely locked within our hearts.

There are good photographers who might elevate themselves to the ranks of the great simply by burning most of their work.

All analyses end badly. Each 'termination' leaves the participants with the taste of ashes in their mouths; each is absurd; each is a small, pointless death. Psychoanalysis cannot tolerate happy endings; it casts them off the way the body's immunological system casts off transplanted organs.

[Richard Avedon's] camera dwells on the horrible things that age can do to people's faces - on the flabby flesh, the slack skin, the ugly growths, the puffy eyes, the knotted necks, the aimless wrinkles, the fearful and anxious set of the mouth, the marks left by sickness, madness, alcoholism, and irreversible disappointment.

Writing cannot be done in a state of desirelessness.

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