[Elsa Dorfman]was well known. Certainly in the Boston area, she's well known as a portrait photographer. My wife always wanted to meet her and then there was some benefit where she was taking pictures.

War is such a peculiar thing - inaugurated by the whims of few, affecting the fate of many. It is difficult, if not impossible, thing to understand, yet we feel compelled to describe it as though it has meaning - even virtue. It starts for reasons often hopelessly obscure, meanders on, then stops

We have more information - a glut of information - than ever before, and perhaps less knowledge. That's what's peculiar. And the only way you can deal with it, I suppose, is to make fun of it. I would rather watch Comedy Central for the news than I'd like to watch any other program on television. Maybe that shows you the state of affairs.

If you asked me what makes the world go round, I would say self-deception. Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that we actually believe. I’m not saying that the truth doesn’t matter. It does. But self-deception is how we survive.

All alone - shorn of context, without captions - a photograph is neither true nor false.... For truth, properly considered, is about the relationship between language and the world, not about photographs and the world.

I gave someone a perverse argument not so long ago about why advertising is better than movies. You want to hear it? Movies operate from a really disingenuous premise, that people are heroes. I know a lot of people and have had an opportunity over the years to observe them. Are they heroes...? Let's put it this way. Advertising tries something simpler and more believable: Products as heroes. I guess the idea is: When all else fails, put your faith in conditioner.

Interviews, when they are just simply an exercise in hearing what you want to hear, are of no interest. And many, many, if not most interviews have that character. The interviewer who comes in with a list of bullet points they're going to address one after the other. Interviews, properly considered, should be investigative. You should not know what you're going to hear. You should be surprised.