People tend to become cynical about even the most appalling crisis if it seems to be dragging on, failing to come to term.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world. That means trying to understand, take in, connect with, what wickedness human beings are capable of; and not be corrupted - made cynical, superficial - by this understanding.

My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything.

Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don’t redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history.

Our appreciations, it was felt, could be so much more inclusive if we said that something, instead of being beautiful, was 'interesting'.

A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning.

The capacity to be overwhelmed by the beautiful is astonishingly sturdy and survives amidst the harshest distractions.