“I wonder if the course of narcissism through the ages would have been any different had Narcissus first peered into a cesspool. He probably did.”

“and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paintyou suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did themI lookat you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the worldexcept possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frickwhich thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time”

“...but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it...”

“I have been to lots of partiesand acted perfectly disgracefulbut I never actually collapsedoh Lana Turner we love you get up”

“Having a Coke with Youis even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonneor being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelonapartly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastianpartly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurtpartly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birchespartly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuaryit is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as stillas solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of itin the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forthbetween each other like a tree breathing through its spectaclesand the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paintyou suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did themI lookat you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the worldexcept possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frickwhich thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first timeand the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurismjust as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase orat a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow meand what good does all the research of the Impressionists do themwhen they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sankor for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefullyas the horseit seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experiencewhich is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it”

“I have, for my own projected works and ideas, only the silliest and dewiest of hopes; no matter what, I am romantic enough or sentimental enough to wish to contribute something to life’s fabric, to the world’s beauty.... [S]imply to live does not justify existence, for life is a mere gesture on the surface of the earth, and death a return to that from which we had never been wholly separated; but oh to leave a trace, no matter how faint, of that brief gesture! For someone, some day, may find it beautiful!”

“life perpetuated in parti-colored loves and beautiful lies all in different languages.”