Francis Scott Fitzgerald really read culture pretty damn clearly. It was he who understood that artistic achievement, really imaginative work, goes where the money is. Where people can afford to buy books and paintings. He linked money - not always in a positive way - to being able to encourage culture.

I had never understood quite so clearly the effective power of Jane Jacob's writing - no, her clear-headed observation - as I did reading “What We See”. Maybe that's really the point of writing. That if you take the time to look, to really observe, then you see what is happening, and, with the clarity of that vision, you can act to save neighborhoods.

To be a biographer is a somewhat peculiar endeavor. It seems to me it requires not only the tact, patience, and thoroughness of a scholar but the stamina of a horse.

Life is impermanent and in the face of that impermanence, cavort! Look death in the eye, tell him you’re as cute as a button, flash a little deviant guile his way, and tell him to go feast on somebody’s else’s sweet flesh.

The hats were nearly all as though made by somebody who had once heard about flowers but never seen one huge muffs of horror.

Francis Scott Fitzgerald really read culture pretty damn clearly. It was he who understood that artistic achievement, really imaginative work, goes where the money is. Where people can afford to buy books and paintings. He linked money - not always in a positive way - to being able to encourage culture.