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.

I write essays first because I have a passionate relationship to the subject and second because the subject is one that people are not talking about.

That sort of reception - where everything is assimilated to the world of celebrity - makes me dream of becoming a more recalcitrant, harder to assimilate writer.

In NY sensuality completely turns into sexuality - no objects for the senses to respond to, no beautiful river, houses, people. Awful smells of the street, and dirt... Nothing except eating, if that, and the frenzy of the bed.

We are ruled by quotations.

I have to come out of the closet of the third person and speak in a more direct way.

All photographs aspire to the condition of being memorable - that is, unforgettable.