All my works serve the particular people I am filming
‘For me, filmmaking is not that complicated. If you make a film about […]
And almost he can remember this
‘It is / Something he could do when he was very young, // […]
Rhythmic and rippling and periphrastic
‘So what is Spear? Well, Hild, but with magic – Hild let off […]
Not the coherent myth of the American century but its unruly shadow
‘There’s a certain tenuousness to Winogrand’s photos; the compositions hold together, but just […]
Visions from those days seem to return with increasing persistence
‘I left Beijing in 1987, shortly before my books were banned there, but […]
After all, guilt is scaled to individuals
‘These are just questions. Please don’t care too much about them. As you […]
Joining, Growing, Dismembering, Steeping
‘All good writing is honest in the sense that it says what the […]
The only colour that matters is green
‘The addition of music from Schooly D, one of the originators of Gangster […]
Spewing forth from a haze of static were vocals thick with rage
‘A gentle hiss filled his ears. […]
I was as incapable of turning away as were the trees
‘ “Katya!” A woman’s voice echoed from the house on the hill, muffled only […]
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it
‘10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. […]
You can see the saltations in the sky on a clear day
‘Usually the surveys came back safely, and no one was lost. Zivia told […]
So we’re all out here laboring in our own individual ruts
‘All this pertains to the concept of the “brightweb” I threw out half-seriously […]
But even then, none of the information I retrieved seemed legible
‘ “All of this. The houses, the decorations, this arrangement you have. The way […]
The emulation of the American Dream is a great hoax
‘5.1 Revolutionary Woman #3 – Code Name: Dolores […]
Mr Truman’s Degree
‘When I say that to choose to kill the innocent as a means […]
The Extractivism of Setting and the Traitor’s Text
‘Canon is a tricky word. I am using the term lightly; I mean […]
A testament to the art of reading
‘I once asked some students how fast they could read, and one of […]
Himes is the songwriter of the downtrodden
‘If Chandler is considered the poet of crime fiction and Hammett its great […]
Long, but never boring
‘Seven years in the making, The Book of Love – long, but never […]
To Return to Innocence From the Other Side
‘I love films that describe the world as a complex, mixed world, and […]
We are living in the century of fear
‘That peculiar mixture of excitement and fear, of melancholy and joy, of boredom […]
Refusing Genocide
‘And the other trick that happens in that Pete Davidson monologue is that, […]
a bullet-stream / of oyster shells
Part of a Dana Levin’s ‘The Living Teaching’: ‘So all hail to me― […]
Brian Evenson on Leslie Norris
‘Leslie was a huge influence on my writing. […] He was very good […]
Possibilities
‘Structural violence always seems to create extremely lopsided structures of imagination. […] The […]
I won’t say any more
「能說的，在片子裡都說完，就不再說了。」 […]
Oscar
‘Nobody liked him in the valley. The elements who went to chapel thought […]
In Dreams
‘Lynch also frees the paranoia of noir from the straightjacket of narrative. One […]
The Black Locomotive
‘The shaft was the negative equivalent of a skyscraper, an absence driven into […]
Anything Goes Inbetween
‘Scorsese always tells them they have to start a certain place, and they […]
The Shout
‘Crossley, a big man of forty or fifty,had a queer, not unpleasant face. […]
Sunday in the Trees
‘I still hadn’t taken my eyes off the zelkovas. They were rooted at […]
The Mark on the Wall
‘A world without professors or specialists or house-keepers with the profiles of policemen, […]
Sun
‘She knew the sun in heaven, blue-molten with his white fire edges, throwing […]
The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie
‘She’d been right, after all. He had been named after a star. […]
How we value human lives
‘If anything good can come of these two tragedies, I hope it’s that […]
Tiananmen
This is James Fenton’s ‘Tiananmen’ […]
The Nomenclature of Fear
‘After a time, I no longer heard my words but only the sound […]
Guest
‘For a split-second his pupils flare, and his nostrils, and he raises his […]
You Shall Know Them by Their Pitchforks
‘Our memories from before do not add up. Some of us remember a […]
My standard for verisimilitude
‘My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I […]
Morning Song
I love the precision of the pauses in ‘Morning Song’, particularly the semicolon […]
The Kromlau Gambit
‘Severed of flesh and earth, the dog’s soul remembered. It remembered wolf and […]
Corwick Grows
‘But then I see how the limits of the city have changed. The […]
The Color of Distance
‘Ani’s ears lifted, this time in surprise. Deep work was dangerous. She remembered […]
Gravity of the Flux
‘Miami Vice is above all a great film on the human condition in […]
Dystopia for Realists
‘Calls for accountability and transparency might sound technocratic and unambitious. But the right […]
Real Tigers
‘Cigarette smouldering in hand he shambled into the lane, a coronet of smoke […]
Follow the Ecstasy
‘When I criticize a system, they think I criticize them – and that […]
My model’s more the European
‘I write crime novels, so yes, of course I think of myself as […]