“It was a large room, heavily outfitted with the usual badly ventilated furnaces, rows of bubbling crucibles, and one stuffed alligator. Things floated in jars. The air smelled of a limited life expectancy.”

“Don't you know that there's another bubble as well An expectations bubble. Bigger houses private planes yachts ...... stupid salaries and bonuses. People come to desire these things and expect them. But the expectations bubble will burst as well as all bubbles do. Come to my gallery and I will sell you beautiful things at a more reasonable price. But the point is that they will have value. Things of real beauty things of the spirit.”

“You . . . smell like rain." Whatever I expected, that hadn't been it. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" "Good," he said. "Definitely good.”

“New York is large, glamorous, easy-going, kindly and incurious, but above all it is a crucible - because it is large enough to be incurious.”

“One of the key things is learning which bits of life you don't need to take seriously. Usually far more than you expect.”

“What is it that I especially find utterly unendurable? That I cannot cope with, that makes me choke and faint? Bad air! Bad air! The approach of some ill-constituted thing; that I have to smell the entrails of some ill-constituted soul!”