Writing Cannot Be Done In A State

The Dominant And Most Deep-dyed Trait Of The Journalist Is His Timorousness. Where The Novelist Fearlessly Plunges Into The Water Of Self-exposure, The Journalist Stands Trembling On The Shore In His Beach Robe. The Journalist Confines Himself To The Clean, Gentlemanly Work Of Exposing The Grieves And Shames Of Others.

[richard Avedon's] Camera Dwells On The Horrible Things That Age Can Do To People's Faces - On The Flabby Flesh, The Slack Skin, The Ugly Growths, The Puffy Eyes, The Knotted Necks, The Aimless Wrinkles, The Fearful And Anxious Set Of The Mouth, The Marks Left By Sickness, Madness, Alcoholism, And Irreversible Disappointment.

A Lawsuit Is To Ordinary Life What War Is To Peacetime. In A Lawsuit, Everybody On The Other Side Is Bad. A Trial Transcript Is A Discourse In Malevolence.

Malice Remains Its Animating Impulse.

Poets And Novelists And Playwrights Make Themselves, Against Terrible Resistances, Give Over What The Rest Of Us Keep Safely Locked Within Our Hearts.