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

What distinguished man from animals was the human capacity for symbolic thought, the capacity which was inseparable from the development of language in which words were not mere signals, but signifiers of something other than themselves.

Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible.

We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves.

These contradictions both hide and increase the natural ambiguity of the photographic image.

Propaganda requires a permanent network of communication so that it can systematically stifle reflection with emotive or utopian slogans. Its pace is usually fast.

Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It’s the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument.

Fanaticism comes from any form of chosen blindness accompanying the pursuit of a single dogma.

By contrast, a woman’s presence… defines what can and cannot be done to her.

What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.

To remain innocent may also be. to remain ignorant.

You can plan events, but if they go according to your plan they are not events.

Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.

All weddings are similar, but every marriage is different.

You cant draw it for others. You can try, of course, but it doesn’t work. People obeying rules laid down my somebody else is not the same thing as respecting life. And if you want to respect life, you have to draw a line.

Oil painting did to appearances what capital did to social relations. It reduced everything to the equality of objects.

A photograph is a result of the photographer’s decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.

I don’t want to advise anyone to do anything, apart from try and stay alive. That’s my advice – don’t die.

I don’t very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.

For me, the lame part of the Sixties was the political part, the social part. The real part was the spiritual part.

Who has not sat before his own heart’s curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart.

It’s going to take a shoehorn to prise these two teams apart

Was sort of intellectually shocked. Contagion is the critical phenomenon which causes the thing to fall apart.

That which once united man Now drives him apart.

You always know when you’re going to arrive. If you go by car, you don’t. Apart from anything else, I prefer cycling. It puts you in a good mood, I find.