Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead.

The writer is either a practicing recluse or a delinquent, guilt-ridden one--or both. Usually both.

One of the author's most ancient roles is to call the community to account for its hypocrisies and bad faith.

We live in a world of copies and we're fascinated when we encounter the originals (in a museum, for instance).

Knowing a great deal about what is in the world art, catastrophe, the beauties of nature through photographic images, people are frequently disappointed, surprised, unmoved when the see the real thing. For photographic images tend to subtract feeling from something we experience at first hand and the feelings they do arouse are, largely, not those we have in real life. Often something disturbs us more in photographed form than it does when we actually experience it.

All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.

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