It is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia. Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos. ... All photographs are memento mori. To take photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt

I feel that I've had enough theoretical speculation to last me a lifetime.

One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves.

The only interesting ideas are heresies

What pornography is really about, ultimately, isn't sex but death.

I write - and talk - in order to find out what I think.

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.