Illnesses have always been used as metaphors to enliven charges that a society was corrupt or unjust.

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

To travel is to shop.

To me, literature is a calling, even a kind of salvation. It connects me with an enterprise that is over 2,000 years old. What do we have from the past? Art and thought. That’s what lasts. That’s what continues to feed people and give them an idea of something better.

A photograph comes into being, as it is seen, all at once.

Rules of taste enforce structures of power.

Marriage is a sort of tacit hunting in couples. The world all in couples, each couple in its own little house, watching its own little interests and stewing in its own little privacy - it's the most repulsive thing in the world. One's got to get rid of the exclusiveness of married love.