If we lose our memory, we lose ourselves. Forgetting is one of the symptoms of death. Without memory we cease to be human beings.

..the writer's obsession - the desire to know and communicate, or, rather, to know everything so as to communicate with the greatest degree of precision.

I realised the amazing power of literature and of the human imagination generally: to make the dead live and to stop the living from dying.

Justice was revenge wrapping itself in a cloak of high principle.

Animals have one thing that puts them way ahead of people: they don't dissemble, and you don't have to pretend in front of them.

Man is afraid to attain what he longs for, just as subconsciously he longs for what he is afraid of.

A picture was a motionless record of motion. An arrested representation of life. A picture was the kiss of death pretending to possess immutability.