Literature usually begets literature.

I don't consider devotion to the past a form of snobbery. Just one of the more disastrous forms of unrequited love.

Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads – as an anthology of images. To collect photographs is to collect the world

Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech.

Never worry about being obsessive. I like obsessive people. Obsessive people make great art

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.''

The way in which a certain kind of political idealism has been discredited and scorned makes the danger not that intellectuals keep on making fools of themselves, formulating political opinions when they might not be as informed as they might be, but that they retreat and leave politics to the professionals.