"Writing cannot be done in a state of desirelessness."
"If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph."
6 likes
Source: Janet Malcolm (1981). “Diana and Nikon: Essays on the Aesthetic of Photography”
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Janet Malcolm
"Analysts keep having to pick away at the scab that the patient tries to form between himself and the analyst to cover over his wounds. The analyst keeps the surface raw, so that the wound will heal properly."
"Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse."
"[Y]ou never come right out and admit you have stretched the rules for your own benefit. You do it and shut up about it, and hope you don't get caught, because if you are caught no one or no one who has any sense will come forward and say he has done the same thing himself."
"All analyses end badly. Each 'termination' leaves the participants with the taste of ashes in their mouths; each is absurd; each is a small, pointless death. Psychoanalysis cannot tolerate happy endings; it casts them off the way the body's immunological system casts off transplanted organs."
"A lawsuit is to ordinary life what war is to peacetime. In a lawsuit, everybody on the other side is bad. A trial transcript is a discourse in malevolence."