Someone who is perennially surprised that depravity exists, who continues to feel disillusioned (even incredulous) when confronted with evidence of what humans are capable of inflicting in the way of gruesome, hands-on cruelties upon other humans, has not reached moral or psychological adulthood.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted - made cynical, superficial - by this understanding.

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

When comedy fails, seriousness begins to leak back in.

Nobody ever discovered ugliness through photographs. But many, through photographs, have discovered beauty.

Any disease that is treated as a mystery and acutely enough feared will be felt to be morally, if not literally, contagious.

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