I think it’s fascinating, but it’s insoluble also. But I’d venture, if I could do it in a humble way, to claim to be an artist, and the motivation of artists is a great mystery. Who knows why a paragraph by Tolstoy is an inspired and often an almost deathless thing. It’s a piece of literature and high art, and a New York Times editorial never is. It couldn’t be. Yet they’re both uses of language.

via INTERVIEW: Walker Evans – “The Thing Itself is Such a Secret and so Unapproachable” 1974 « ASX | AMERICAN SUBURB X | Photography & Culture.