Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of ''meanings.''

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don't become inured to what they are shown — if that's the right way to describe what happens — because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.

I discovered that I am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but any person at all

To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.

The public voice in the theater today is crude and raucous, and, all too often, weak-minded.

Writing is a mysterious activity.

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.