In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them.

I discovered that I am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but any person at all

I don't write easily or rapidly. My first draft usually has only a few elements worth keeping. I have to find what those are and build from them and throw out what doesn't work, or what simply is not alive.

A thing is a thing, not what is said of that thing.

Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.

One criticizes in others what one recognizes and despises in oneself. For example, an artist who is revolted by another’s ambitiousness.