Nobody ever discovered ugliness through photographs. But many, through photographs, have discovered beauty.

Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art.

Most of my reading is rereading.

art is the most general condition of the Past in the present. ... Perhaps no work of art is art. It can only become art, when it is part of the past. In this normative sense, a 'contemporary' work of art would be a contradiction - except so far as we can, in the present, assimilate the present to the past.

There is an understandable vindictiveness in people who come from Communist countries. They want to keep telling us that we were fools to think that we could make radical changes in our society. Though I understand their dismay, respect their suffering and don't understand the gullibility of some people who don't take in how repressive these societies are, I still think it's important to keep people of all kinds as active in civic matters as possible.

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

The only ideals allowed are healthy ones - those everyone may aspire to, or comfortably imagine oneself possessing.