It was good to walk into a library again; it smelled like home.
You are a total stranger and you want to take my library book.
As a historian, I have learned that, in fact, not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it. And it is not only reaching back that endangers us; sometimes history itself reaches inexorably forward for us with its shadowy claws.
It was strange, I reflected... that even in the weirdest circumstances, the most troubling episodes of one’s life, the greatest divides from home and familiarity, there were these moments of undeniable joy.
These are works of history about your century, the twentieth. A fine century-I look forward to the rest of it.
Not everyone who reaches back into history can survive it.
In my mortal life, I saw mainly those texts that the church sanctioned – the gospels and the Orthodox commentary on them, for example. These works were of no use to me, in the end.
I don’t think painters have the answers about a painting except the painting itself. Anyway, a painting has to have some kind of mystery to it to make it work.