The decline of education in North America and I suppose in Western Europe makes it harder to have a common body of references.

When Cartier-Bresson goes to China, he shows that there are people in China, and that they are Chinese.

Life is a movie; death is a photograph.

I want to save my soul, that timid wind.

The wisdom of literature is quite antithetical to having opinions. 'Nothing is my last word about anything,' said Henry James. Furnishing opinions, even correct opinions - whenever asked - cheapens what novelists and poets do best, which is to sponsor reflectiveness, to pursue complexity. Information will never replace illumination.

Remember when you hear yourself saying one day that you don't have time anymore to read or listen to music or look at paintings or go to the movies or do whatever feeds your head now. Then you're getting old. That means they got you, after all.

Try not to live in a linguistic slum.