Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing below the surface, for a redemption and celebration of the body of the world. Ultimately, having an experience becomes identical with taking a photograph of it.

With the modern diseases (once TB, now cancer) the romantic idea that the disease expresses the character is invariably extended to assert that the character causes the disease -- because it has not expressed itself. Passion moves inward, striking and blighting the deepest cellular recesses.

Courage is morally neutral.

Writing is a little door. Some fantasies, like big pieces of furniture, won’t come through.

All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation.

Pornography is a theatre of types, never of individuals.

What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.