An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished equation. - Mary McCarthy

You still believe in progress,' she said kindly. 'I'd forgotten there were people who did. It's your substitute for religion. Your tribal totem is the yardstick. But we've transcended all that. No first-rate mind can accept the concept of progress any more.

The rationalist mind has always had its doubts about Venice. The watery city receives a dry inspection, as though it were a myth for the credulous — poets and honeymooners.

For all his derogation, he truly believed in the modern, as subversive of established values, a mine or fuse laid under the terrain of the virtuous; the words, modern, secular, experimental, were drawled out by him in a seductive, blandishing tone, like a veiled erotic invitation.