“In an age of synthetic images and synthetic emotions, the chances of an accidental encounter with reality are remote indeed.”
—Serge Daney (1944–1992)
“For thousands the world is a freak show, the images flicker past and disappear, the impressions remain flat and disconnected in the soul. Thus, they are easily led by the opinions of others, are willing to let their impressions be reordered, rearranged, and reevaluated.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.... Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)