Claude Monet: “[The water lilies exist only] for the pleasure of the eye and also for motifs to paint.”

Laura Mulvey: “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.”

Renee E. Tajima: “Asian women in film are, for the most part, passive figures who exist to serve men, especially as love interests for white men (Lotus Blossoms) … These ‘Oriental flowers’ are utterly feminine, delicate, and welcome respites from their often loud, independent American counterparts. Many of them are spoils of the last three wars fought in Asia.”

Vincent van Gogh: “Just think of that; isn't it almost a new religion that these Japanese teach us, who are so simple and live in nature as if they themselves were flowers?”

Claude Monet: “If you absolutely must … find an affiliation for me, put me with the Japanese of old … I approve of ... their aesthetic, which evokes the presence by the shadow, the whole by the fragment.”

Solmaz Sharif: “It matters what you call a thing.”