The creative phase of an idea coincides with the period during which it insists, cantankerously, on its boundaries, on what makes it different; but an idea becomes false and impotent when it seeks reconciliation, at cut-rate prices, with other ideas.

This is the beauty that emerges from self-confidence, class confidence. That says, I am not born to please. I am born to be pleased.

As objects of contemplation, images of the atrocious can answer to several different needs. To steel oneself against weakness. To make oneself more numb. To acknowledge the existence of the incorrigible.

Everything should be understood, and anything can be transformed - that is the modern view.

Translation is the circulatory system of the world's literatures

The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders.

A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.