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The painted aircraft took on sunlight and pulse. Sweeps of color, bands and spatters, airy washes, the force of saturated light—the whole thing oddly ...more

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Time and death: It's the ultimate vision of an artist at the end of everything. It's just what's there. It was not something I planned to do.

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It is the form that allows a writer the greatest opportunity to explore human experience...For that reason, reading a novel is potentially a significa...more

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As always when he worked with this much concentration he began to feel a sense of introverting pressure. There was no way out once he was in, no genui...more

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Why shouldn't his death bring you into some total scandal of garment-rending grief? Why should you accommodate his death? Or surrender to it in thin-l...more

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I'm completely aware of Matisse and what he said, that painters must begin by cutting out their tongues.

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The vast and terrible depth."“Of course,” he said.“The inexhaustibility.”“I understand.”“The whole huge nameless thing.”“Yes, absolutely.”“The massive...more

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The power of the dead is that we think they see us all the time. The dead have a presence. Is there a level of energy composed solely of the dead? The...more

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Supermarkets this large and clean and modern are a revelation to me. I spent my life in small steamy delicatessens with slanted display cabinets full ...more

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When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more y...more

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People get bitten. But I won't.' I found myself saying, 'You will, you will. These snakes don't know you find death inconceivable. They don't know you...more

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No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal k...more

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The plane had lost power in all three engines, dropped from thirty-four thousand feet to twelve thousand feet. Something like four miles. When the ste...more

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Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?'What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing

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All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part o...more