Jews and homosexuals are the outstanding creative minorities in contemporary urban culture. Creative, that is, in the truest sense: they are creators of sensibilities. The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of ''meanings.''

As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.

the appetite for thinking must be regulated, as all sensible people know, for it may stifle one's life.

To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge-and therefore, like power.

The romantic treatment of death asserts that people were made singular, made more interesting, by their illnesses.

Self-exposure is commendable in art only when it is of a quality and complexity that allows other people to learn about themselves from it.