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.

For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.

Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

Photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Each still photograph is a privileged moment turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again.

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

I feel inauthentic at a party. ... Going to a party is a 'low' activity - the authentic self is compromised, fragmented - one plays 'roles.' One isn't fully present, beyond role-playing. One doesn't (can't) tell the full truth, which means one is lying, even if one doesn't literally tell lies.