The reader becomes God, for all textual purposes. I see your eyes glazing over, so I'll hush.

I often think I can see it in myself and in other young writers, this desperate desire to please coupled with a kind of hostility to the reader.

This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.

My pictures are my eyes. I photograph what I see - and what I want to see.

We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life 'outside' the story changes the story.

The great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates.