How many lives do we live? How many times do we die? They say we all lose 21 grams... at the exact moment of our death. Everyone. And how much fits into 21 grams? How much is lost? When do we lose 21 grams? How much goes with them? How much is gained? How much is gained? Twentyone grams. The weight of a stack of five nickels. The weight of a hummingbird. A chocolate bar. How much did 21 grams weigh?

From: Paul De Vree: ‘Poesia Visiva’, Galerij De Zwarte Panter, Antwerpen, 1979 [Collection M HKA, Antwerp]

Chungking Express, 1994, Wong Kar Wai

We laughed, we laughed waiting for a train

Nikolay Tolmachev

Shot by Guy Bourdin for Vogue Paris, October 1983

"Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions-not outside" --- Marcus Aurelius

The cure to all the world's problems

Substance: Inside New Order

Thom Yorke for Visions magazine, 1997.

Charlotte Martin, 1970s

What Franz Kafka had to be so clear and simple about was that nothing is clear and simple. On his death bed he said of a vase of flowers that they were like him: simultaneously alive and dead. All demarcations are shimmeringly blurred. Some powerful sets of opposites absolutely do not, as Heraclitus said, cooperate. They fight. They tip over the balance of every certainty. We can, Kafka said, easily believe any truth and its negative at the same time.
Guy Davenport, from Kafka and Existentialism c. 1996

"One genius and three Manchester United supporters"

This is not the stuff that dreams are made of. Each second here is another education in the art of destruction. The wonder, of hate. There's no heart left here. Only eyes that lie on people that charge through the day. Trying to remember it all began, is not good. All that matters is how it affects you, and the people you care about. That's the real world. You see? How easy is this? Too easy. To stop. They say when a ship sinks the rats float to the top. Some people look forward to that time.

16 Years of Alcohol, Richard Jobson, 2003