The unit of the poet is the word, the unit of the prose writer is the sentence.

No 'we' should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain.

Mallarme said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph.

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.

The basic unit for contemporary art is not the idea, but the analysis of and extension of sensations.

Most of my reading is rereading.

The problems of this world are only truly solved in two ways: by extinction or duplication.