People robbed of their past seem to make the most fervent picture takers, at home and abroad.

The way in which a certain kind of political idealism has been discredited and scorned makes the danger not that intellectuals keep on making fools of themselves, formulating political opinions when they might not be as informed as they might be, but that they retreat and leave politics to the professionals.

AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them.

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don't become inured to what they are shown — if that's the right way to describe what happens — because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.

It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.

The most potent elements in a work of art are, often, its silences.

What is the most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.