But I cannot forgive those who did not care about more than their own glory or well-being. They thought they were civilized. They were despicable. Damn them all.

I want to be able to be alone, to find it nourishing - not just a waiting.

The writers or artists I write about are not necessarily those I care most about (Shakespeare is still my favourite writer) but those whose work I feel has been neglected.

Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we're shown a photograph of it.

Love dies because its birth was an error.

The public voice in the theater today is crude and raucous, and, all too often, weak-minded.

Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents pots and pans - the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a human landscape. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A featherweight portable museum.