Totem poles and wooden masks no longer suggest tribal villages but fashionable drawing rooms in New York and Paris.
A yawn is more disconcerting than a contradiction.
Scepticism is always a back road leading to some credo or other.
The dignified catastrophes of tragedy bear little resemblance to the slow ruin inflicted by life.
The avant-garde is now stranded in the past.
To make advice agreeable, try paradox or rhyme.