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.

It can happen that a book, unlike its authors, grows younger as the years pass.

Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand and story to story.

The zoo cannot but disappoint.

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.

'Fahrenheit 9/11' is astounding. Not so much as a film - although it is cunning and moving - but as an event.

Your lips, beloved, are like a honeycomb: honey and milk are under the tongue. And the smell of your clothes is like the smell of my home.