Photographers are always imposing

There are some elements in life - above all, sexual pleasure - about which it isn't necessary to have a position.

Everything was simple, physical, painful, exalting. The world consisted of the four elements - land and water, firepower and distancing air.

In good films, there is always a directness that entirely frees us from the itch to interpret.

Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images — as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past.

Any disease that is treated as a mystery and acutely enough feared will be felt to be morally, if not literally, contagious.

A good listener: a physical presence that is warm, alert, intelligent - more important than any words.