Modern discussions of the possibility of tragedy are not exercises in literary analysis; they are exercises in cultural diagnostics, more or less disguised.

Tragedy is a vision of nihilism, a heroic or ennobling vision of nihilism.

Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.

He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser.

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

I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.

Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.

Today, everything exists to end in a photograph.

Sight is a promiscuous sense. The avid gaze always wants more.

Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents' pots and pans - the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a human landscape. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A featherweight portable museum.