“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.”

“I discovered that I am tired of being a person. Not just tired of being the person I was, but any person at all”

“Each of us carries a room within ourselves, waiting to be furnished and peopled, and if you listen closely, you may need to silence everything in your own room, you can hear the sounds of that other room inside your head.”

“[O]ne person's 'barbarian' is another person's 'just doing what everybody else is doing.”

“to take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.”

“The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.”

“Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.”