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

Indeed, the idea that doubt can be heroic, if it is locked into a structure as grand as that of the paintings of Cezanne's old age, is one of the keys to our century. A touchstone of modernity itself.

Nothing they design ever gets in the way of a work of art

Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective political failure can still work as a model of intellectual affirmation or dissent.

Transportation made sublimation literal. It conveyed evil to another world.

What strip mining is to nature the art market has become to culture.

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