One can know worlds one has not experienced, choose a response to life that has never been offered, create an inwardness utterly strong and fruitful.

Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.

I'm extremely interested in the Russian formalists and have been for many years. I'm more drawn to their writing, which is expressive and literary, than to writing which is extremely academic or jargon-ridden.

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

The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.

The purpose of art is always, ultimately, to give pleasure - though our sensibilities may take time to catch up with the forms of pleasure that art in a given time may offer.

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