Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It's the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.

Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.

The autobiographical doesn't interest me. I could think of few things less interesting than rooting about in my life.

A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence... defines what can and cannot be done to her.

Compassion has no place in the natural order of the world which operates on the basis of necessity. Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.

Post-modernism has cut off the present from all futures. The daily media add to this by cutting off the past. Which means that critical opinion is often orphaned in the present.

What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.