Things Are Not What They Seem.

Young Girls Are Sad. They Like To Be; It Makes Them Feel Strong.

Art Does Not Exist For Politics, Or For Instruction- It Exists Primarily For Pleasure, Or It Is Nothing.

There Are Many Ways Of Writing Badly About Painting... There Is An 'appreciative' Language Of Threadbare, Not Inaccurate, But Overexposed And Irritating Words... The Language Of The Schools Which 'situates' Works And Artists In Schools And Movements... Novelists And Poets [that] See Paintings As Allegories Of Writing.

That Is Human Nature, That People Come After You, Willingly Enough, Provided Only That You No Longer Love Or Want Them.

Narration Is As Much A Part Of Human Nature As Breath And The Circulation Of The Blood.... Storytelling Is Intrinsic To Biological Time, Which We Cannot Escape. Life, Pascal Said, Is Like Living In A Prison From Which Every Day Fellow Prisoners Are Taken Away To Be Executed. We Are All, Like Scheherazade, Under Sentence Of Death, And We All Think Of Our Lives As Narratives, With Beginnings, Middles And Ends.