Sanity is a cozy lie.

Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds

Life is not significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are

Intelligence is really a kind of taste taste in ideas

I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life, but rather for my life to interpret my dreams

The standard that a society should actually embody its own professed principles is a utopian one, in the sense that moral principles contradict the way things really are --- and always will be. How things really are --- and always will be --- is neither all-evil nor all-good but deficient, inconsistent, inferior. Principles invite us to do something about the morass of contradictions in which we function morally. Principles invite us to clean up our act; to become intolerant of moral laxity and compromise and cowardice and the turning away from what is upsetting: that secret gnawing of the heart that tells us that what we are doing is not right, and so counsels us that we'd be better off just not thinking about it

The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own

Cancer patients are lied to, not just because the disease is (or is thought to be) a death sentence, but because it is felt to be obscene -- in the original meaning of that word: ill-omened, abominable, repugnant to the senses

Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it