Space reserved for being serious is hard to come by in a modern society, whose chief model of a public space is the mega-store. - Susan Sontag

But the past is the biggest country of all, and there's a reason one gives in to the desire to set stories in the past: almost everything good seems located in the past, perhaps that's an illusion, but I feel nostalgic for every era before I was born; and one is freer of modern inhibitions, perhaps because one bears no responsibility for the past, sometimes I feel simply ashamed of the time in which I live.

I don't want to express alienation. It isn't what I feel. I'm interested in various kinds of passionate engagement. All my work says be serious, be passionate, wake up.

It’s not ‘natural’ to speak well, eloquently, in an interesting articulate way. People living in groups, families, communes say little — have few verbal means. Eloquence — thinking in words — is a byproduct of solitude, deracination, a heightened painful individuality.