The fact that we still live well cannot ease the feeling that we no longer live nobly.

Art is like baby shoes. When you coat them with gold, they can no longer be worn.

I know how to choke. Given even a splinter-thin opportunity to let my side down and destroy my own score, I will seize it. Not only does ice water not run through my veins, but what runs there has a boiling point lower than body temperature.

I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto.

So, you know, I think any life has in it enough material, enough points of departure, to fuel a writer's career and that we shouldn't worry about what we're not but to try to focus on what we are and what we do know.

Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.

Unlike the older, more humanly shaped arts, which begin with a seed and accumulate their form organically, photography clips its substance out of an actual continuum.