All artists and creative people are basically unhappy people. If you were happy, that would mean you were content with the world as it was and why would you ever want to change it?

I have a total responsibility to the reader. The reader has to trust me and never feel betrayed.

You could say that clinical depression is an incapacity to aesthetic response. It's like there's a constant agreement within ourselves, a kind of mutual understanding between ourselves and the world.

Beauty is a physiological reaction. Beauty is not an object.

Artists are sometimes in a position to tell the truth, but they're positioned as a Cassandra. They're gifted with impeccable prophecy and the assurance of never being listened to.

Everything I've learned about art was (a) because I was actually interested, or (b) I was actually interested in covering my ass because of what I was writing about.

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