“It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”

“Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the priviledge of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor shall be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.”

“Good management is better than good income.”

“A dead body is much more fascinating than a live one, and I have learned that most corpses tell better stories.”

“Making the rich poorer does not make the poor richer, but it does make the state stronger—and it does increase the power of officials and politicians, power more menacing, more permanent and less useful than market power within the rule of law. Inequality of income can only be eliminated at the cost of freedom. The pursuit of income equality will turn this country into a totalitarian slum.”

“Everything that flickered could be made permanent. That was what drew him to photography, what made every painstaking step worth it: the permanence of the image. That was what fascinated him, the working against time...”