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.

Passion paralyzes good taste.

Each of us carries a room within ourselves, waiting to be furnished and peopled, and if you listen closely, you may need to silence everything in your own room, you can hear the sounds of that other room inside your head.

That's what a community is: taking for granted certain assumptions, not having to start from zero every time. This is no longer true.

Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptable for one's private, secret thoughts - like a confidante who is deaf, dumb, and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself. ... The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather - in many cases - offers an alternative to it.

Decline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn't write to others any more; one writes to oneself.

Ours is a society in which secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamor to get on a television show to reveal.