What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.

All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity - their links with their dead and the unborn.

The publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product.

What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.

Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.

To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognised for oneself.

What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.