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.

A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of "spirit" over matter.

The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes.

To collect photographs is to collect the world.

Sight is a promiscuous sense. The avid gaze always wants more.

Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies.

The moral pleasure in art, as well as the moral service that art performs, consists in the intelligent gratification of consciousness.