The single most amazing phenomenon is the discrediting of idealism.

When you are writing, you are - from society's point of view - only producing the first version which will then be processed and recycled.

I make an idol of my moral consciousness. My pursuit of the good is corrupted by the sin of idolatry.

To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing - a hand worker in an era of mass production.

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.

What I really wanted was every kind of life, and the writer’s life seemed the most inclusive.

To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.