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

There are some elements in life - above all, sexual pleasure - about which it isn't necessary to have a position.

A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture

I was fascinated by quotations and lists. And then I noticed that other people were fascinated by quotations and lists: people as different as Borges and Walter Benjamin, Novalis and Godard.

A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot - whatever the artist's personal intention - advocate anything at all.

Our appreciations, it was felt, could be so much more inclusive if we said that something, instead of being beautiful, was 'interesting'.

What interests me is to understand the nature of the modern.