There is virtue in virtuosity, especially today, when it protects us from the tedious spectacle of ineptitude.

But the existence of a cult does not mean that images appropriate to it automatically follow.

Why wait for a call when you have a command?

If you like your soccer cerebral, and the triumph ultimately to be wrung out of staying power, Milan was the place to be. If you love the uncertainty of teams that cannot defend yet have the courage to attack, attack, attack, then Seville was heaven... The common denominator between the victories of Arsenal and Fenerbache? The strength of mind, the courage to dare in another team's domain, the inner belief that is as much a part of sporting success as the skill a fellow may be born with.

In America, nostalgia for things is apt to set in before they go.

It is the nature of carnivores to get power and then, having disposed of their enemies, to deploy the emollient powers of Great Art to make themselves look like herbivores.

America is a construction of mind, not of race or inherited class or ancestral territory.