Corsican vendetta corsa knife inscribed “ Che la mia ferita sia Mortale “ (May my wound be mortal), early 20th century.

Lonely cow walks near a tank and a burning oilfield during the Gulf War. Kuwait, 1991.

We learn from the Gospel that when they asked Jesus what the truth was, he did not reply.

Go in fear of abstractions.

Das Apokalyptische Weib. Matthias Gerung ~ ca.1532

The sun comes out but the rain stays put. No rainbows today. Not here.

Ferrara. 1992. Fog at night. 

He knew

The totalization of production leads to the total profanation of life. Rest, too, is made to serve production and is degraded into leisure and recreational time. It is no longer the beginning of a holy period of assembly. The mounting pressure to perform makes even recreational pauses impossible. Thus, many people find that they fall ill during leisure time. This illness has even been given a name: leisure sickness.

- Byung-Chul Han, The Disappearance of Rituals

A clown at a lunch counter in a diner, Reno, Nevada, 1963

Let “desire” be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping.

— Emil Cioran

Grozny, 1995

I sensed a mutual indifference behind polite smiles and had the overwhelming impression that, more and more frequently, I was watching people who didn’t really know why they were living.

- Krzysztof Kieślowski