“Just because you will not see the work completed does not mean you are free not to take it up.”

“Wingate sighs thoughtfully. "Hard to say. He's not static. He began with almost pure Impressionism, which is dead. Anyone can do it. But the vision was there. Between the fifth and twelfth paintings, he began to evolve something much more fascinating. Are you familiar with the Nabis?"The what?"Nabis. It means 'prophets.' Bonnard, Denis, Vuillard?"What I know about art wouldn't fill a postcard."Don't blame yourself. That's the American educational system. They simply don't teach it. Not unless you beg for it. Not even in university.”

“The temptation to second-guess is strong. But I must remember one thing. Life is simple.You are healthy or you are sick. You are faithful to your wife or you aren't. You are alive or you are dead. I am alive.”

“Thought like that showed me the needless ambiguity of words like space-time. The average person heard a word like that and figured he'd never understand it. But it was so simple. Every place you ever saw was linked to a specific time ... the school you visited twenty years after you graduated, the football field you played on, the track you ran -- none of them was the same. If they were, you would collide with the generations that had run on them before and after you. The lover you kissed was not the same person he or she was sixty seconds before. In that minute, a million skin cells had died and been replaced by new ones. The smallest slices of space-time separated thought from action Life from death.”

“I listened in amazement. You saw a face on an American street, or in an office, and you had no idea that a tragic epic lay behind it.”

“Sooner or later. It had better be sooner. Later is like the horizon; it recedes as you approach.”

“Because I expected so little, Gaines's painting is startlingly powerul. A lank-haired blond woman with a hard face sits at akitchen table in the harsh light of a bare bulb. She's surrounded by dirty cereal bowls and fast-food bags, and her shirt is open to the waist, revealing small sagging breasts. Her hollow eyes look out from the canvas with the sullen resignation of an animal that has helped build its own cage.”