There are some very powerful contributions to knowledge in the scientific world or the legal world, but art is singular. That's why every dictator gets rid of the artists first. They burn the books and execute the artists first. Then they get on with whatever else they're interested in. Art might do something. It's dangerous.

There is really nothing more to say - except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

Sex is difficult to write about because it's just not sexy enough. The only way to write about it is not to write much. Let the reader bring his own sexuality into the text. A writer I usually admire has written about sex in the most off-putting way. There is just too much information.

My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember.

Evil is so seductive. It needs to grind you up and make you its slave.

I am a moralist. I worry.

Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.