What pornographic literature does is precisely to drive a wedge between one’s existence as a sexual being – while in ordinary life a healthy person is one who prevents such a gap from opening up.
A great writer has all 4 – but you can still be a good writer with only 1 and 2.
Nature in America has always been suspect, on the defensive, cannibalized by progress. In America, every specimen becomes a relic.
It is the nature of aphoristic thinking to be always in a state of concluding; a bid to have the final word is inherent in all powerful phrase-making.
In contrast to the written account-which, depending on its complexity of thought, reference, and vocabulary, is pitched at a larger or smaller readership-a photograph has only one language and is destined potentially for all.
Photographs objectify: they turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed.
Photographs trade simultaneously on the prestige of art and the magic of the real.
Fear of sexuality is the new, disease-sponsored register of the universe of fear in which everyone now lives.
Unfortunately, moral beauty in art – like physical beauty in a person – is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.
Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern. Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood.
The only transformation that interests me is a total transformation – however minute.
False values begin with the worship of things.
Many things in the world have not been named; and many things, even if they have been named, have never been described.
The “happening” operates by creating an asymmetrical network of surprises, without climax or consummation, this is the alogism of dreams rather than the logic of most art.
What I expect from writers-and from myself as a writer-is to articulate a complex view of things. To incite us to be more compassionate. To orchestrate our mourning. And to celebrate ecstasy.
One man thinks before he acts. Another man thinks after he acts. Each is of the opinon that the other thinks too much.
I love to read the way people love to watch television.
All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.
Creativity needs to be taken care of. It’s like a big baby that needs to be nourished.
The Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one.