I am profoundly uncertain how to write. I know what I love and what I like, because it's a direct passionate response. But when I write, I'm very uncertain whether it's good enough. That is, of course, the writer's agony.

... liberal intellectualstend to have a classical theory of politics, in which the state has a monopoly of power; hoping thatthose in positions of authority may prove to be enlightened men, wielding power justly, they are natural, if cautious, allies of the "establishment.

Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds.

Death is unbearable unless you can get beyond the I.

Along with people who pretty themselves for the camera, the unattractive and the disaffected have been assigned their beauty.

The only ideals allowed are healthy ones - those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing.

Standing alone, photographs promise an understanding they cannot deliver. In the company of words, they take on meaning, but they slough off one meaning and take on another with alarming ease.