These ways to make people buy were strange and new to us, and many bought for the sheer pleasure at first of holding in the hand and talking of something new. And once this was done, it was like opium, we could no longer do without this new bauble, and thus, though we hated the foreigners and though we knew they were ruining us, we bought their goods. Thus I learned the art of the foreigners, the art of creating in the human heart restlessness, disquiet, hunger for new things, and these new desires became their best helpers.

Goldfish are flowers ... flowers that move.

No single crisis shapes a generation; but a succession of events, each one bringing its shaping blows to bear.

We are all products of our time, vulnerable to history.

With some people there is such a thing as the habit of betrayal.

Moralists have no place in an art gallery.

The rice bowl is to me the most valid reason in the world for doing anything. A piece of one's soul to the multitudes in return for rice and wine does not seem to me a sacrilege.