Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life.

—Grace Paley, “A Conversation with My Father”

How do you know anything about your own history—most of all the history of your subjectivity, and the part that images have played in its construction?

—Jo Spence, “The Walking Wounded?”

The Jewish mindset has driven me crazy my whole life.

—Vanessa Davis, “In search of the whole truth”

My own nose, which, surely, is, for all intents and purposes, myself?

—Nikolai Gogol, “The Nose”

I always start with the nose, that’s all I know.

—Aline Kominsky Crumb, “Public Conversation”