The aesthetic experience has to be given. And beauty is a regular experience of every person - every person who is not clinically depressed!

Your medium has to be alive to you, no matter what you do.

My problem with political art is not that it's bad art necessarily, but that it is terrible politics.

With art criticism it's difficult to discuss beauty, to assess it, because there's always the possibility that we're insane.

You don't need everybody to agree with you, but you do need a few people. And by this point I have a fairly high degree of confidence in my judgment, in that I don't doubt my sanity; or, even if I do, I don't have to be reassured.

I do have pleasure when I'm writing. I mean, I'm aware of pleasure. And sometimes I make myself laugh, with a joke or something; or I feel gleeful.

To me, the greatest artists are almost entirely non-verbal.