God is love, I said, but art's the possibility of forms, and shadows are the source of identity.

The work of art is, after all, an act of faith in our ability to communicate symbolically.

Every serious novel is, beyond its immediate thematic preoccupations, a discussion of the craft, a conquest of the form, a conflict with its difficulties and a pursuit of its felicities and beauty.

We don't all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even 'Little Red Riding Hood.' The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.

If social protest is antithetical to art, what then shall we make of Goya, Dickens, and Twain?