My own view is that one cannot be religious in general any more than one can speak language in general; at any given moment one speaks French or English or Swahili or Japanese, but not 'language.

A man never forgets his body the way a woman does, because a man is pushing his body, a part of his body, forward, to make the act of love happen. He brings the jut of his body into the act of love, then takes it back, when it has had its way.

Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcende nce.

I feel inauthentic at a party. ... Going to a party is a 'low' activity - the authentic self is compromised, fragmented - one plays 'roles.' One isn't fully present, beyond role-playing. One doesn't (can't) tell the full truth, which means one is lying, even if one doesn't literally tell lies.

You have to sink way down to a level of hopelessness and desperation to find the book that you can write.

So successful has been the camera's role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.

Art is a form of consciousness.