A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture

Intelligence is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.

This is the beauty that emerges from self-confidence, class confidence. That says, I am not born to please. I am born to be pleased.

Try not to live in a linguistic slum.

A personality is our way of being for others. We hope that others will meet us half way or more, gratify our needs, be our audience, soothe our fears.

In a lot of writing or intellectual discourse we're starting to use that model: "Oh, this is where it comes from!" I would like to concentrate on work which is more resistant to that procedure, as I think fiction is.

Mallarme said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book. Today everything exists to end in a photograph.