It was van Gogh's madness that prevented him from working; the paintings themselves are ineffably sane, if sanity is to be defined in terms of exact judgment of ends and means and the power of visual analysis.

Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.

Modernism is the protein of our cultural imagination.

In the Somme valley, the back of language broke. It could no longer carry its former meanings. World War I changed the life of words and images in art, radically and forever. It brought our culture into the age of mass-produced, industrialized death. This, at first, was indescribable.

The World's Fair audience tended to think of the machine as unqualifiedly good, strong, stupid and obedient. They thought of it as a giant slave, an untiring steel Negro, controlled by Reason in a world of infinite resources.

Christmas began in the heart of God. It is complete only when it reaches the heart of man.Why wait for a call when you have a command?

The hallmark of the minor artist is to be obsessed with style as an end in itself.