You tell me these two were my parents, so now I know but it's a memory that you've given me. I'll remember the photo from now on, but not them.

A mystic is a hysteric who has met her confessor before her doctor.

A book is a fragile creature. It suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands.

I returned to the courtyard and saw that the sun had grown weaker. Beautiful and clear as it had been, the morning (as the day approached the completion of its first half) was becoming damp and misty. Heavy clouds moved from the north and were invading the top of the mountain, covering it with a light brume. It seemed to be fog, and perhaps fog was also rising from the ground, but at that altitude it was difficult to distinguish the mists that rose from below and those that come down from above. It was becoming hard to discern the bulk of the more distant buildings.

What we honor as prudence in our elders is simply panic in action.

I should be at peace. I have understood. Don't some say that peace comes when you understand? I have understood. I should be at peace. Who said that peace derives from the contemplation of order, order understood, enjoyed, realized without residuum, in joy and truimph, the end of effort? All is clear, limpid; the eye rests on the whole and on the parts and sees how the parts have conspired to make the whole; it perceives the center where the lymph flows, the breath, the root of the whys.

If photography is to be likened to perception, this is not because the former is a natural process but because the latter is also coded.