Literature, art, like civilization itself, are only accidents.

For memory is a moral action, a choice. You can choose to remember. You can choose not.

Paradox: how do we know what we have failed to see because we have no language to express it, thus we cannot know that we have failed to see it.

When you give up struggle, there's a kind of love.

I believe that any form of art is a species of exploration and transgression. ... Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment.

There is the expectation that a younger generation has the opportunity to redeem the crimes and failings of their elders and would have the strength and idealism to do so.

Budapest in late May is a city of lilacs. The sweet, languid, rather sleepy smell of lilacs wafts everywhere. And it is a city of lovers, many of them quite middle-aged. Walking with their arms around each other, embracing and kissing on park benches. A sensuousness very much bound up (it seems to me) with the heady ubiquitous smell of lilacs.