Every invention eventually becomes obsolete.

I'm not sure that Van Gogh got up in the morning and looked at the crows and the bizarre clouds and went damn that's a good painting, you know? No, he considered shooting himself, and one day he did.

I like to write adventure stories; that's what I tell myself. But you can't help letting your own personality, your own experiences, slip through.

We think literature is immortal, but even that decays and ultimately turns to dust.

You can't go home and listen to Chopin, and just use it.

I was always totally convinced that three weeks after the revolution they'd put me up against the wall and shoot me.

I think the word is counter-productive. Capitalism is counter-productive to art, just as the Catholic Church was counter-productive to art four hundred years ago.