I'm not sure at all that literature should be studied on the university level. ... Why should people study books? Isn't it rather silly to study Pride and Prejudice. Either you get it or you don't.

An important job of the critic is to savage what is mediocre or meretricious.

Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use only the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.

Pornography is a theatre of types, never of individuals.

I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province.

One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.

Images anesthetize. An event known through photographs certainly becomes more real than it would have been if one had never seen the photographs ... But after repeated exposure to images it also becomes less real. ... 'concerned' photography has done at least as much to deaden conscience as to arouse it.