An ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isn’t tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.

The cynicism that regards hero worship as comical is always shadowed by a sense of physical inferiority

Human life is limited but I would like to live forever.

It seems to me that before the photograph can exist as art it must, by its very nature choose whether it is to be a record or a testimony.

I had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight.

Possessing by letting go of things was a secret of ownership unknown to youth.

He had never looked forward to the wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would he be able to die young—and if possible free of all pain? A graceful death—as a richly patterned kimono, thrown carelessly across a polished table, slides unobtrusively down into the darkness of the floor beneath. A death marked by elegance.