The rich, like well brought up children, are meant to be seen, not heard. - Lewis H. Lapham

We are a people captivated by the power and romance of metaphor, forever seeking the invisible through the image of the visible.

Nobody wants to say, at least not for publication, that we live in a society that cares as much about the humanities as it cares about the color of the rain in Tashkent.

Most American cities shop to their best advantage when seen from a height or from a distance, at a point where the ugliness of the buildings dissolves into the beauty of an abstraction.