Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New Year's prayer, not a resolution. I'm praying for courage.

Being in love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.

Art is not consciousness per se, but rather its antidote- evolved from within consciousness itself.

Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.

The writer must be four people: 1) The nut, the obsede 2) The moron 3) The stylist 4) The critic. 1 supplies the material; 2 lets it come out; 3 is taste; 4 is intelligence.

I am profoundly uncertain how to write. I know what I love and what I like, because it's a direct passionate response. But when I write, I'm very uncertain whether it's good enough. That is, of course, the writer's agony.

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