“Somewhere between what the lens depicts and what the caption interprets, a mental picture intervenes, a cultural ideology defining what and how to see, what to recognize as significant.”

“The daguerreotype reproduces what appeared before a lens at a particular moment and never again-its appearance is simultaneous with its disappearance, its death.”

“Reading American photographs is also a way of reading the past-not just the scenes recorded and the faces immobilized into permanent images, but the past as culture, as ways of thinking and feeling, as experience”

“The power of both myth and art is this magical ability to open doors, to make connections — not only between us and the natural world, but between us and the rest of humanity. Myths show us what we have in common with every other human being, no matter what culture we come from, no matter what century we live in. . .and at the same time, mythic stories and art celebrate our essential differences...”

“In the middle of my depression, somebody told me about a self-helpgroup for people who wanted to persue personal visions, and I thoughtthat might be just the thing for me, since I no longer had any. So Iwent to this Goals Meeting. It was in an Episcopal church in the leafysuburbs, and when I walked inside, a nice lady was explaing that herGoal was to get out of debt and buy a pony for her little daughter. Then this other fellow got up to share. He was a white boy in adashiki. He said, "My name is Ira and I have a Goal. Right now I'munemployed and in debt and I'm living with my parents, who don'tunderstand me at all. But my faith in this program is so huge that Iknow that one year from today I'm going to be traveling across theUnited States with my Spirit Guide. My Spirit Guide is going to be awhile malamute dog named Isis. I mean, I know this as clearly as I'veknown anything in my life. My Goal is for Isis to guide me to thehomes of my favorite self-help authoers. Isis is going to take me tomeet John Bradshaw and Louise Hay and M. Scott Peck, and I'm going toget them to mentor me!" He kind of bellowed this. And I wasn't surewhether Ira was exactly what John Bradshaw and Louise Hay and M. ScottPeck deserved or whether I hoped they kept shotguns in their homes. Iwas honestly torn.”

“Most people find the word Apocalypse, to be a terrifying concept. Checked in the dictionary, it means only revelation, although it obviously has also come to mean end of the world. As to what the end of the world means, I would say that probably depends on what we mean by world. I don’t think this means the planet, or even the life forms upon the planet. I think the world is purely a construction of ideas, and not just the physical structures, but the mental structures, the ideologies that we’ve erected, that is what I would call the world. Our political structures, philosophical structures, ideological frameworks, economies. These are actually imaginary things, and yet that is the framework that we have built our entire world upon. It strikes me that a strong enough wave of information could completely overturn and destroy all of that. A sudden realization that would change our entire perspective upon who we are and how we exist.”

“She hops expectantly into the sink. I turn on the tap for her; she laps without a glance in my direction, like a duchess so used to being ministered to that she no longer notices the servants and sees only a world where objects dumbly bend to her wishes, doors opening, faucets discharging cool water, delicious things appearing in her dish.”