The particular qualities and intentions of photographs tend to be swallowed up in the generalized pathos of time past.

Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.

Illnesses have always been used as metaphors to enliven charges that a society was corrupt or unjust.

One task of literature is to formulate questions and construct counterstatements to the reigning pieties. And even when art is not oppositional, the arts gravitate toward contrariness. Literature is dialogue: responsiveness. Literature might be described as the history of human responsiveness to what is alive and what is moribund as cultures evolve and interact with one another.

I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don't consider it a moral virtue.

Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are

The easiest thing in the world for me is to pay attention.