“Books are not only the arbitrary sum of our dreams, and our memory. They also give us the model of self-transcendence.”

Art is a form of consciousness.

Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.

One can never ask anyone to change a feeling.

Being in love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.

The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.

Time exists in order that everything doesn’t happen all at once, and space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.

The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes.

It hurts to love. It’s like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.

Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos.

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art.

It is not the position, but the disposition.

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.

All my life I’ve been looking for someone intelligent to talk to.

I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces ‘intelligence.

My library is an archive of longings.

When you read the book you see that these guys aren’t holding any punches. They’re straightforward. They’re honest. They’re giving you their honest opinion.

I do things differently, because I don’t go by a rule book, because I lead from the heart, not the head, and albeit that’s got me into trouble in my work, I understand that.

Why will people go astray when they have this blessed Book to guide them?

To travel far, there is no better ship than a book.

If you are open-minded and ready to learn, there are many things which you can learn not only from books and instructors but from the very life experience itself.

I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.

The book of nature which we have to read is written by the finger of God.

Programming is a skill best acquired by practice and example rather than from books.