We live in a dominant culture of ceaseless Departure and Progress that has so far lasted two or three centuries.

The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power.

If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.

We who draw do so not only to make something observed visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable destination

Everything in life, is a question of drawing a life, John, and you have to decide for yourself where to draw it. You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn't work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.

The heart of Paris is like nothing so much as the unending interior of a house. Buildings become furniture, courtyards become carpets and arrases, the streets are like galleries, the boulevards conservatories. It is a house, one or two centuries old, rich, bourgeois, distinguished. The only way of going out, or shutting the door behind you, is to leave the centre.

The past grows gradually around one, like a placenta for dying.