The arts are the only things that separate us from the other animals. The arts are not decorative. They are essential to our comprehension of consciousness and ourselves.
All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don’t want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don’t think art should be escapist. That’s a waste of time.
Being different is interesting; there’s nothing implicitly inferior or superior about it. Great difference, of course, produces natural caution; and if the differences are too extreme well, then, reality tends to fade away.
Well, when you write about people of a certain age we are in a postsexual situation. If I write about younger people then I write sexually, because their drive is sexual. It depends upon the circumstances.
It always seems to me better to slough off the answer to a question that I consider to be a terrible invasion of privacy – the kind of privacy that a writer must keep for himself.
One must let the play happen to one; one must let the mind loose to respond as it will, to receive impressions, to sense rather than know, to gather rather than immediately understand.
