The photographer's intentions do not determine the meaning of a photograph, which will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the diverse communities that have use for it.

Cancer is a demonic pregnancy.

Nature in America has always been suspect, on the defensive, cannibalized by progress. In America, every specimen becomes a relic.

Some of the exuberance of my essay-writing has gone because I'm worried about the uses they could serve.

Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.

The solution to a problem - a story that you are unable to finish - is the problem. It isn't as if the problem is one thing and the solution something else. The problem, properly understood = the solution. Instead of trying to hide or efface what limits the story, capitalize on that very limitation. State it, rail against it.

The taste for worst-case scenarios reflects the need to master fear of what is felt to be uncontrollable. It also expresses an imaginative complicity with disaster.