It is photography itself that creates the illusion of innocence. Its ironies of frozen narrative lend to its subjects an apparent unawareness that they will change or die. It is the future they are innocent of. Fifty years on we look at them with the godly knowledge of how they turned out after all--who they married, the date of their death--with no thought for who will one day be holding photographs of us.

"The truth is we love each other, we've never stopped, we're obsessed. And we failed to do a thing with it. We couldn't make a life. We couldn't give up the love, but we wouldn't bend to its power. . . . Whenever I'm complaining about some latest social breakdown in the newspapers, I have to remind myself--why should I expect millions of strangers with conflicting interests to get along when I couldn't make a simple society with the father of my children, the man I've loved. . . ?

[H]e was struck by the recently concluded war not as a historical, geopolitical fact but as a multiplicity, a near infinity of private sorrows. . . .

"The work we have to do is with ourselves if we're ever going to be at peace with each other."