If it weren’t for books, it would be almost as if none of these names had ever existed, and if … More
Category: Quote
Rebecca Solnit: Men explain Lolita to me.
Photographs and essays and novels and the rest can change your life; they are dangerous. Art shapes the world. I … More
Fretting about words
We fret about words, we writers. Words mean. Words point. They are arrows. Arrows stuck in the rough hide of … More
The reader who arose from the mechanical reproduction of literature is a reader acutely aware of the disjunction between book … More
At this point Kublai Khan interrupted him or imagined interrupting him, or Marco Polo imagined himself interrupted with a question … More
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the … More
It is a platitude in the teaching of drawing that the heart of the matter lies in the specific process … More
Accept that I can plan nothing.
Accept that I can plan nothing. Any consideration that I make about the ‘construction’ of a picture is false and … More
Visual art
At its best, visual art is philosophy by other means and poetry without words. Visual art asks the grandest questions, … More
Terrible enthusiasm for ideas.
‘What is this terrible enthusiasm you have for ideas?’ ‘What?’ My voice came out a croak, a papery rasp. I … More