Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. It is only later that they claim remembrance, when they show their scars.

I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining. We do not remember. We rewrite memory much as history is rewritten. How can one remember thirst?

Who said that time heals all wounds? It would be better to say that time heals everything - except wounds. With time, the hurt of separation loses its real limits. With time, the desired body will soon disappear, and if the desiring body has already ceased to exist for the other, then what remains is a wound, disembodied.

Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. It is only later that they claim remembrance, when they show their scars.

I’ve been round the world several times and now only banality still interests me.

When men die, they enter history. When statues die, they enter art. This botany of death is what we call culture.

We feel more emotion... before an amateur photograph linked to our own life history than before the work of a Great Photographer, because his domain partakes of art, and the intent of the souvenir-object remains at the lower level of personal history.