“… interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.”

“What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.”

“All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up!”

“Let the atrocious images haunt us. … This is what human beings are capable of doing– may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously. Don’t forget.”

“Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies.”

“Being photographed… I feel transfixed, trapped… I become the looked-at… For as much as I am a professional seer, I am a hopelessly amateur see-ee. An eternal photographic virgin. I feel the same perplexity each time I’m photographed.”

“We want to leave the language in perhaps slightly better shape because of our passage through it, in all our books, rather than in worse shape.”

“It is difficult for the citizens of America, having never seen their country devastated by war to really understand and appreciate the full horrors of war and the absolute necessity for bending all our efforts to preventing another and even more disastrous conflict. Surely the problem that concerns all of us most greatly is the possibility of a new war.”

“I am a homosexual and a writer, both of whom are professionally self-regarding and self-esteeming creatures.”

“The only interesting ideas are heresies.”