Perversity is the muse of modern literature.
The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, its silences.
Decline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn't write to others any more; one writes to oneself.
Is it the obligation of great art to be continually interesting? I think not.
Cameras began duplicating the world at that moment when the human landscape started to undergo a vertiginous rate of change: while an untold number of forms of biological and social life are being destroyed in a brief span of time, a device is available to record what is disappearing.
Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.