The possession of a camera can inspire something akin to lust. And like all credible forms of lust, it cannot be satisfied.

The truth of history crowds out the truth of fiction - as if one were obliged to choose between them.

Life is not significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are.

False values begin with the worship of things.

The quote is always fascinating because it changes out of context, becomes different and sometimes more mysterious. It has a directness and assertiveness it may not have had in the original. I think the quality of inaccessibility, the mystery, is important - that whatever matters can't be taken in on just one reading or one seeing. This is certainly a quality of the little of art that lasts.

The history of art is a sequence of successful transgressions.

Indeed, the very first acknowledgment (as far as I am aware) of the attraction of mutilated bodies occurs in a founding description of mental conflict. It is a passage in The Republic, Book IV, where Plato’s Socrates describes how our reason may be overwhelmed by an unworthy desire, which drives the self to become angry with a part of its nature.