War tears, rends. War rips open, eviscerates. War scorches. War dismembers. War ruins.

The photograph is like a quotation, or a maxim or proverb. Each of us mentally stocks hundreds of photographs, subject to instant recall.

Surrealism is a bourgeois disaffection; that its militants thought it universal is only one of the signs that it is typically bourgeois.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

Sight is a promiscuous sense. The avid gaze always wants more.

In the United States it's not important which religion you adhere to, as long as you have one.

Intelligence is not necessarily a good thing, something to value or cultivate. It's more like a fifth wheel - necessary or desirable when things break down. When things go well, it's better to be stupid ... Stupidity is as much a value as intelligence.