Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous.

A photograph is a meeting place where the interests of the photographer, the photographed, the viewer and those who are using the photograph are often contradictory. These contradictions both hide and increase the natural ambiguity of the photographic image.

Autobiography begins with a sense of being alone. It is an orphan form.

Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.

A drawing is essentially a private work, related only to the artist's own needs; a 'finished' statue or canvas is essentially a public, presented work - related far more directly to the demands of communication.

It is not usually possible in a poem or a story to make the relationship between particular and universal fully explicit. Those who try to do so end up writing parables.

Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma.