I took the measure of the unbearable vanity of the West, that has never ceased to privilege being over non-being, what is spoken to what is left unsaid. I walked alongside the little stalls of clothing dealers. I heard in the distance Mr. Akao’s voice reverberating from the loudspeakers… a half tone higher…He writes me from Japan. He writes me from Africa. He writes that he can now summon up the look on the face of the market lady of Praia that had lasted only the length of a film frame. Will there be a last letter?
- Sans Soleil, Chris Marker

Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash – the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we’re going to die. “Be of good heart,” cry the dead artists out of the living past. “Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing.” Maybe a man’s name doesn’t matter all that much.
- F For Fake, Orson Welles

Alas, for the day is fading,
the evening shadows are stretching.
Our being, like a cage full of birds,
is filled with moans of captivity.
And none among us knows how long
he will last.
The harvest season passed,
the summer season came to an end,
and we did not find deliverance.
Like doves we cry for justice…
and there is none.
We wait for light
and darkness reigns.
- Khaneh Siah Ast, Farrokhzad

And then… Complete Silence. Everything that lives is still. Are the hills going to march off? Will heaven fall upon us? Will the Earth open under us? We don’t know. We don’t know, for a total eclipse has come upon us… But… but no need to fear. It’s not over. For across the sun’s glowing sphere, slowly, the Moon swims away. And the sun once again bursts forth, and to the Earth slowly there comes again light, and warmth again floods the Earth. Deep emotion pierces everyone. They have escaped the weight of darkness
- Werckmeister’s Harmonies, Bela Tarr

“Freedom” is a word that feeds the dreams of human beings. No-one can explain what it means, but everyone understands it.
- Ilha Das Flores, Jorge Furtado

Whenever men are equal, without that difference, happiness cannot exist. So you wouldn’t aid the humble, the unhappy. In all the world no voluptuousness flatters the senses more than social privilege.
- Salo, Pasolini

We’ll begin with a reign of terror, a few murders here and there, murders of great men, murders of little men, just to show we make no distinction.
- The Invisible Man, James Whale, H.G. Wells (novel)