The ideology of capitalism makes us all into connoisseurs of liberty - of the indefinite expansion of possibility.

Writing is finally a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways. To leap. To fly. To fail.

Is it the obligation of great art to be continually interesting? I think not.

Currently intellectuals in Western Europe and North America are extremely demoralized and shaken by the rise of a virulent conservative tendency (which some have even joined).

To collect photographs is to collect the world.

Writing is a mysterious activity.

The writers or artists I write about are not necessarily those I care most about (Shakespeare is still my favourite writer) but those whose work I feel has been neglected.