Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable.

No 'we' should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain.

In the final analysis, style is art. And art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation.

whatever doesn't kill you leaves scars.

Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.

writers are makers, not just transmitters, of myths. Literature offers not only myths but counter-myths, just as life offers counter-experiences - experiences that confound what you thought you thought, or felt, or believed.

In contrast to the written account-which, depending on its complexity of thought, reference, and vocabulary, is pitched at a larger or smaller readership-a photograph has only one language and is destined potentially for all.