The impulse to paint comes neither from observation nor from the soul (which is probably blind) but from an encounter: the encounter between painter and model: even if the model is a mountain or a shelf of empty medicine bottles.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.

If the public photograph contributes to a memory, it is to the memory of an unknowable and total stranger.

To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. (The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. To be naked is to be without disguises.

Advertising is not merely an assembly of competing messages; it is a language itself which is always being used to make the same general proposal

The camera relieves us of the burden of memory.

The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences.