Quote collection
540 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies."
"The problems of this world are only truly solved in two ways: by extinction or duplication."
"Because each photograph is only a fragment, its moral and emotional weight depends on where it is inserted. A photograph changes according to the context in which it is seen: thus Smith's Minamata photographs will seem different on a contact sheet, in a gallery, in a political demonstration, in a police file, in a photographic magazine, in a book, on a living-room wall. Each o these situations suggest a different use for the photographs but none can secure their meaning."
"Our appreciations, it was felt, could be so much more inclusive if we said that something, instead of being beautiful, was 'interesting'."
"Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer."
"A good book is an education of the heart."
"While a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is never more than the stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less than the registering of an emanation (light waves reflected by objects) — a material vestige of its subject in a way that no painting can be."
"Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness."
"Self-censorship, the most important and most successful form of censorship, is rampant. Debate is identified with dissent, which is in turn identified with disloyalty. There is a widespread feeling that, in this new, open-ended emergency, we may not be able to 'afford' our traditional freedoms."
"Standing alone, photographs promise an understanding they cannot deliver. In the company of words, they take on meaning, but they slough off one meaning and take on another with alarming ease."
"In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself."
"Wherever people feel safe — they will be indifferent."
"I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them."
"The photographer both loots and preserves, denounces and consecrates."
"Never worry about being obsessive. I like obsessive people. Obsessive people make great art"
"My library is an archive of longings."
"No 'we' should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people's pain."
"Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos."
"Decline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn't write to others any more; one writes to oneself."
"A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask."