Novelist

As I go to sleep I remember what my father said-that one can never be sure if one will awake. The way my health is now, this is becoming more and more real.

I write for a certain sphere of readers in the United States who on average watch seven and a half hours of multichannel television per day.

In my photographs it is apparent that there was no posing at the moment I released the shutter.

The planned sit-down reception is an artificial forum where one is presented with a limited number of persons with whom he can hold a conversation.

In London, the weather would affect me negatively. I react strongly to light. If it is cloudy and raining, there are clouds and rain in my soul.

The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.

I do not gather things, I prefer to rent them rather than to possess them.

If we reduce social life to the smallest possible unit we will find that there is no social life in the company of one.

Banks introduced the installment plan. The disappearance of cash and the coming of the credit card changed the shape of life in the United States.

It is possible to stand around with a cocktail in one's hand and talk with everyone, which means with no one.

I am inspired by human sexuality. The act itself is mechanical and holds little interest to me.

I don't fret over lost time - I can always use the situations in a novel.

I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.

A trait which differentiated New York from European cities was the incredible freedom and ease in which life, including sexual life, could be carried on, on many levels.

Mapplethorpe presented the body as a sexual object, separating it from the humanity of the person. He added nothing to photography as a medium. I hold his work in low regard.

And really the purpose of art - for me, fiction - is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have.

Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.

Persons who have been homeless carry within them a certain philosophy of life which makes them apprehensive about ownership.

The things I write are for those who are willing to accept a new relationship between the reader and the author.

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.