The sightseers would have been disappointed, as the real thing always makes a poorer show than the fake. (“I’m Dangerous Tonight”)

All too often, we mask truth in artifice, concealing ourselves for fear of losing the ones we love or prolonging a deception for those we wish to expose. We hide behind that which brings us...

…and yet, at the end of it all, a few very broad lines did seem to stick out, like the primary colors in a painting that explain all the confusing blends. And once I had...

Naturalness onstage is just as much an artifice as naturalism in the novel

Actually, no. I won’t ever go digital. I work with thirty-five or large format. I like the hand-jobs, you know. And I still do most of my own printing. I’ve developed such a profound distaste...

In the end, this volume should be read a s a collection of love stories, Above all, they are tales of love, not the love with which so many stories end – the love of...

There’s a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.

Adornment, exoticism, affectation are all willed decadent strategies meant to pervert the texts they made. Decadent texts often live in their descriptive excursions, in their evocation of dreams, mysterious places and states of mind, in...

A mode of thought does not become ‘critical’ simply by attributing that label to itself, but by virtue of its content.

… the lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making.

It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men… and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious...

When one is young, one venerates and despises without that art of nuances which constitutes the best gain of life, and it is only fair that one has to pay dearly for having assaulted men...