The suburban West is, from a moral perspective, depressing evidence that we have misused our freedom. There is, however, another aspect to the landscape, an unexpected glory. Over the cheap tracts and littered arroyos one sometimes see a light as clean as that recorded by O'Sullivan. Since it owes nothing to our care, it is an assurance; beauty is final.

You've always been free. You've always been bright and shining. Everything else is just nonsense.

When you catch on to your awakening, the world does not change. You just see it differently, that's all. You acquire a feeling of immortality. A feeling of divine bliss, so to speak, when things no longer have the power to affect you.

. . .art is a discovery of harmony, a vision of disparities reconciled, or shape beneath confusion.

There is always a subjective aspect in landscape art, something in the picture that tells us as much about who is behind the camera as about what is in front of it.

When art is defined by Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, you've got a society that's impoverished.

Are there grounds now and then for an unironic smile?