“We have a very precise image – an image at times shameless – of what we have lost, but we are ignorant of what may follow or replace it.”

Dictatorships foster oppression, dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable is the fact that they foster idiocy.

I saw a sunset in Queretaro that seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Bengal.

From my weakness, I drew strength that never left me.

How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?

To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we’ll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.

The visible universe was an illusion or, more precisely, a sophism. Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply it and extend it.

My undertaking is not difficult, essentially. I should only have to be immortal to carry it out.

A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Shortly before he dies he discovers that this patient labyrinth of lines is a drawing of his own face.

I have preferred to teach my students not English literature but my love for certain authors, or, even better, certain pages, or even better than that, certain lines. One falls in love with a line, then with a page, then with an author. Well, why not? It is a beautiful process.

If space is infinite, we may be at any point in space. If time is infinite, we may be at any point in time.

He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.

When I write, I do it urged by an intimate necessity. I don’t have in mind an exclusive public, or a public of multitudes, I don’t think in either thing. I think about expressing what I want to say. I try to do it in the simplest way possible.

There is nothing in the world that is not mysterious, but the mystery is more evident in certain things than in others: in the sea, in the eyes of the elders, in the color yellow, and in music.

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.

We accept reality so readily – perhaps because we sense that nothing is real.

Truth never penetrates an unwilling mind.

I had a sense that photography could provide a bridge from the world of science to the world of art, or image.

First impressions are always the most important.

The weight of your body is controlled by the image in your mind.

The final bridge to cross is to let go of the mind-created ‘spiritual’ self. Burn that bridge behind you. Stay empty of self-image and cease looking back. Remain in the neutrality of being. That’s it!

First of all, directing is an idea that you have of a total flow of images that are going on, which are incidentally actors, words, and objects in space.

All those images are being produced basically the same way, through a lens and a camera.

The Country Doctor Revisited captures the trials and tribulations of medicine, but also the satisfaction and the extraordinary rewards that come to those who embrace such a practice.

The influence a leader exerts in altering moods, evoking images and expectations, and in establishing specific desires and objectives determines