One of the characteristics of mudslinging is that mud sticks if it's thrown with enough force for long enough.

Hyperrealism can create an atmosphere of surrealism because nobody sees the world in such detail.

Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.

I don't know what to say about literary critics. I think it's probably best to say nothing.

To understand just one life you have to swallow the world ... do you wonder, then, that I was a heavy child?

To be born again,' sang Gibreal Farishta tumbling from the heaveans, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly Tat-taa! Takatun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love mister, without a sigh?

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.