Life is not significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are.

What I expect from writers-and from myself as a writer-is to articulate a complex view of things. To incite us to be more compassionate. To orchestrate our mourning. And to celebrate ecstasy.

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.

When you are writing, you are - from society's point of view - only producing the first version which will then be processed and recycled.

Ours is a society in which secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamor to get on a television show to reveal.

The "happening" operates by creating an asymmetrical network of surprises, without climax or consummation, this is the alogism of dreams rather than the logic of most art.

To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing - a hand worker in an era of mass production.