In literary representation, the distinction between the genuinely erotic and the licentious is a distinction not of subject-matter, but of perspective. The genuinely erotic work is one which invites the reader to re-create in imagination the first-person point of view of someone party to an erotic encounter. The pornographic work retains as a rule the third-person perspective of the voyeuristic observer.

Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it does not matter.

A philosophy that begins in doubt assails what no-one believes, and invites us to nothing believable

Classical buildings endure because they are loved, admired and accepted, and enjoy an innate adaption to human needs and purposes.

Modernism in architecture went hand in hand with socialist and fascist projects to rid old Europe of its hierarchical past

Beauty is assailed from two directions - by the cult of ugliness in the arts, and by the cult of utility in everyday life.

There is a crucial distinction to be made between innovation and originality. The second, unlike the first, can never break with what preceded it: to be original, an artist must also belong to the tradition from which he departs. To put it another way, he must violate the expectations of his audience, but he must also, in countless ways, uphold and endorse them.