“The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.” – The Benefactor, 1963

“The problem is not that people remember through photographs, but that they remember only the photographs.” – Regarding the Pain of Others, 2003

“It hurts to love. It’s like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.” – Journal entry, August 8, 1960, Reborn

“My library is an archive of longings.” – JOURNAL ENTRY, APRIL 26, 1980, AS CONSCIOUSNESS IS HARNESSED TO FLESH

“My library is an archive of longings.” – JOURNAL ENTRY, APRIL 26, 1980, AS CONSCIOUSNESS IS HARNESSED TO FLESH

“Literature was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom. Literature was freedom. Especially in a time in which the values of reading and inwardness are so strenuously challenged, literature is freedom.”

Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality…or they enlarge a reality that is felt to be shrunk. One can’t possess reality, one can possess images—one can’t possess the present but one can possess the past.

My desire to write is connected to my homosexuality. I need the identity as a weapon to match the weapon that society has against me. I am just becoming aware of how guilty I feel being queer.