What I really wanted was every kind of life, and the writer’s life seemed the most inclusive.

In the twentieth century, the repellent, harrowing disease that is made the index of a superior sensitivity, the vehicle of "spiritual" feelings and "critical" discontent, is insanity.

Art is not only about something; it is something. A work of art is a thing in the world, not just a text or commentary on the world.

I like to feel dumb. That’s how I know there’s more in the world than me.

Along with people who pretty themselves for the camera, the unattractive and the disaffected have been assigned their beauty.

All struggle, all resistance is -- must be -- concrete. And all struggle has a global resonance. If not here, then there. If not now, then soon. Elsewhere as well as here.

Self-exposure is commendable in art only when it is of a quality and complexity that allows other people to learn about themselves from it.