I Am Very Unmusical. I

Writing Is A Concentrated Form Of Thinking.

Freud Is Finished, Einstein's Next.

Stories Are Consoling, Fiction Is One Of The Consolation Prizes For Having Lived In The World.

A Writer Takes Earnest Measures To Secure His Solitude And Then Finds Endless Ways To Squander It.

Sitting For A Picture Is Morbid Business. A Portrait Doesn't Begin To Mean Anything Until The Subject Is Dead. This Is The Whole Point. We're Doing This To Create A Kind Of Sentimental Past For People In Decades To Come. It's Their Past, Their History We're Inventing Here. And It's Not How I Look Now That Matters. It's How I'll Look In Twenty-five Years As Clothing And Faces Change, As Photographs Change. The Deeper I Pass Into Death, The More Powerful My Picture Becomes. Isn't This Why Picture-taking Is So Ceremonial? It's Like A Wake. And I'm The Actor Made Up For The Laying-out.