A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of "spirit" over matter.

Photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Each still photograph is a privileged moment turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.

My library is an archive of longings.

The fantasies inspired by TB in the last century, by cancer now, are responses to a disease thought to be intractable and capricious--that is, a disease not understood--in an era in which medicine's central premise is that all diseases can be cured.

I feel that I've had enough theoretical speculation to last me a lifetime.

Everything was simple, physical, painful, exalting. The world consisted of the four elements - land and water, firepower and distancing air.

Writing is a little door. Some fantasies, like big pieces of furniture, won’t come through.