"I have always said that writing is energy taking shape in language. Sexual, libidinal, mental, and spiritual energies give to us the irresistible need to declare things, to make new propositions, to look for solutions which can unknot social patterns of violence and death, to explore unknown territories of the mind, to search for each of our identities, to fill the gap between real and unreal. In other words, energy motivates us to write but it also needs to find its motive to be able to do this. Energy has to go out and has to come in. The body is its channel. But the body claims to be more than a channel: it thinks of strategies to regularize the flow of energy. The body alone cannot process all energy, it needs language to process energy into social meaning. [...] Filtered by language, this energy finds a rhythm, becomes a voice, transforms itself into images and metaphors. Energy that is too low keeps you silent, energy that is too high makes noise instead of meaning—even though silence and noise can eventually by interpreted as an historical momentum."
"Sexual, libidinal, mental, and spiritual energies provided with a motive or an object of desire, or both, engage us in a creative dimension. When these energies synchronize they offer a privileged moment to a writer. Most of the time we call this 'inspiration.'"
"Now let me make a distinction between the motive and the object of desire. The motive is something that whatever the situation eternally returns in the work of an artist. The motive is roots, flesh and skin. It is incontrovertible. It is inscribed in us as a first and ultimate memory. It is carnal knowledge. All good writers have a strong motive. The motive is most of the time hidden in the core of a work, hidden but recurrent as a theme. It seems to me that motive (a good reason and a pattern) is a personal, existential question that makes one endlessly repeat: why or how come?"
"For me, a good writer or a good painter always repeats the same motive, the same question, the same statement in all her or his works. Think of Kandinsky, Rothko, Betty Goodwin. Great artists are always driven by a motive while fairly good creators have to rely on their objects of desire: if the object isn’t there, then nothing happens but sweat."
"As for the object of desire, it is probably always the same one mediated by different people we fall in love with, by books we cannot recover from, by situations to which we respond passionately. "