Robert Vavra is one of these artists, part magician, part alchemist, who is able to create a series of photographs in unforgettable compositions. Only visible are the dunes, the blinding fields of flowers and the vast sky, the epic intimacy of Robert Vavra's vision.

Generals are fascinating cases of arrested development - after all, at five all of us wanted to be generals.

Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.

It's wrong to flog a man. It's against his being a man.

It is youth that has discovered love as a weapon.

Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.

I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.