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

What I really wanted was every kind of life, and the writer’s life seemed the most inclusive.

My own view is that one cannot be religious in general any more than one can speak language in general; at any given moment one speaks French or English or Swahili or Japanese, but not 'language.

Theories that diseases are caused by mental states and can be cured by will power, are always an index of how much is not understood about the physical terrain of a disease.

A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning.

Passion paralyzes good taste.

The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects - making it possible... to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.