“Death is the opposite of everything. Trying to race ahead of my death—to get in front of it, then turn around and face it, let it catch up with me, pass me, and then take my place behind it.”

“The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.”

“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.”

“It was from a weekly visit to the cinema that you learned how to strut, to smoke, to kiss, to fight, to grieve. … But whatever you took home from the movies was only a part of the larger experience of losing yourself in faces, in lives that were not yours. … The strongest experience…

“I have always thought: China is as far as anyone can go. Still true. When I was ten, I dug a hole in the back yard. I stopped when it got to be six feet by six feet by six feet. ‘What are you trying to do?’ said the maid. ‘Dig all the way to…