Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal.

Never be ashamed of your subject, and of your passion for your subject.

There is the expectation that a younger generation has the opportunity to redeem the crimes and failings of their elders and would have the strength and idealism to do so.

Later, her first intense, serious love affair, yes then she'd lost something more tangible, if undefinable: her heart? her independence? her control of, definition of, self? That first true loss, the furious bafflement of it. And never again quite so assured, confident.

The books I read I do enjoy, very much; otherwise I wouldn't read them. Most of them are for review, for the New York Review of Books, and substantial.

The ideal art, the noblest of art: working with the complexities of life, refusing to simplify, to "overcome" doubt.

Ideas brush past fleeting and insubstantial as moths. But I let them go, I don't want them. What I want is a voice.