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.

In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.

The only ideals allowed are healthy ones - those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing.

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

'Camp' is a vision of the world in terms of style - but a particular style. It is the love of the exaggerated.

The wisdom of literature is quite antithetical to having opinions. 'Nothing is my last word about anything,' said Henry James. Furnishing opinions, even correct opinions - whenever asked - cheapens what novelists and poets do best, which is to sponsor reflectiveness, to pursue complexity. Information will never replace illumination.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted - made cynical, superficial - by this understanding.