“We who draw do so not only to make something observed visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable destination”

[O]ften art has judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past suffered, so that it has never been forgotten.

This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.

As Nelson Mandela has pointed out, boycott is not a principle, it is a tactic depending upon circumstances.

What any true painting touches is an absence – an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.

Publicity is the life of this culture – in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive – and at the same time publicity is its dream.

Everything became exchangeable because everything became a commodity.

Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. The nude is condemned to never being naked. Nudity is a form of dress.

For the Cro-Magnons, space is a metaphysical arena of continually intermittent appearances and disappearances.

Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

For the artist, drawing is discovery. And that is not just a slick phrase; it is quite literally true.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls.

Every authentic poem contributes to the labor of poetry… to bring together what life has separated or violence has torn apart…

A drawing is an autobiographical record of one’s discovery of an event – either seen, remembered or imagined. A ‘finished’ work is an attempt to construct an event in itself.

Deep in the nature of theatre is a sense of ritual. The cinema, by contrast, transports its audience individually, singly, out of the theatre towards the unknown.

There’s the artist’s intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn].

The human imagination… has great difficulty in living strictly within the confines of a materialist practice or philosophy.

You can calculate Zsa Zsa Gabor’s age by the rings on her fingers.

RHETORIC The art of making life less believable; the calculated use of language, not to alarm but to do full harm to our busy minds and properly dispose our listeners to a pain they have never dreamed of.

A calendar, you have to calculate how much time has passed between you and the facts, the emotions to be narrated.

Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.

Hold’em is a game of calculated aggression. If your cards are good enough for you to call a bet, they are good enough to raise with.

The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.

The mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows.

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.