Fishing largely consists of not catching fish; failure is as much a part of the sport as knee injuries are of football.

We have entered a period of intolerance which combines, as it sometimes does in America, with a sugary taste for euphemism.

Confidence is the prize given to the mediocre

It was a secular cathedral, dedicated to the rites of travel.

It was the basilica of gossip, the Vatican of inside dope.

Why should we expect modernist taste to be any smarter than premodernist or postmodernist?

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.