"I have spoken about the moments of patient gathering and grouping of fragments of the city, of traces of the deepest collective heritage, scattered and truncated yet contained in the smallest stone. And it will never be possible to bury every small stone."
—Álvaro Siza Vieira

"At every moment in time, next to the things it seems natural to do and say, and next to the ones we’re told to think—no less by books or ads in the métro than by funny stories—are other things that society hushes up without knowing it is doing so. Thus it condemns to lonely suffering all the people who feel but cannot name these things."
—Annie Ernaux

"I don't want to avoid telling a story, but I want very, very much to do the thing that Valéry said - to give the sensation without the boredom of its conveyance. And the moment the story enters, the boredom comes upon you."
—Francis Bacon