Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner.

What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce. Mark Twain Women are an alien race set down among us.

Whatever art offered the men and women of previous eras, what it offers our own, it seems to me, is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. The town I grew up in had many vacant lots; when I go back now, the vacant lots are gone. They were a luxury, just as tigers and rhinoceri, in the crowded world that is making, are luxuries. Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep.

How sad, how strange, we make companions out of air and hurt them, so they will defy us, completing creation.

Natural beauty is essentially temporary and sad, hence the impression of obscene mockery which artificial flowers give us.

Hope bases vast premises on foolish accidents, and reads a word where in fact only a scribble exists.