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It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene and as if by m...more

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If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

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The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.

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I put artistic values above all others. Because writing, for me, is an expanded world, a limitless world, containing all.

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We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

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This diary is my kief, hashish and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice.

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I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.

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The writer is the duelist who never fights at the stated hour, who gathers up an insult, like another curious object, a collector's item, spreads it o...more

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A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion.

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The other night we talked about literature's elimination of the unessential, so that we are given a concentrated "dose" of life. I said, almost indign...more

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Henry's recollections of the past, in contrast to Proust, are done while in movement. He may remember his first wife while making love to a whore, or ...more

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Then I realized the vital necessity of art. Human life, yes, you nurse people, you clean house, you market, but then comes the moment of solace and fl...more

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I stress the expansion and elaboration of language. In simplifying it, reducing it, we reduce the power of our expression and our power to communicate...more