Opening an entire piece with a quotation sets
the tone for all that follows.
"It is my duty," wrote the correspondent
for The Times of London at the liberation of the Nazi death camp
at Belsen, "to describe something beyond the imagination
of mankind." That was how I felt in the summer of 1979
when I arrived in Cambodia.
"The source of my painting is the unconscious,"
Pollock declared, and there was no Abstract Expressionist of whom
this was more clearly true.
"I think it of great importance,"
wrote Gouverneur Morris to George Washington in 1790, advising him
on how to furnish the presidential mansion, "to fix the
taste of our country properly . . . everything about you should
be substantially good and majestically plain, made to endure."
"I still have all my arms and legs and I still
have my smarts," says Gloria Mason, a 73-year-old widow
from Wheaton. "Where do I go?" Every morning, millions
of men and women-smart, curious, vibrant-face a day with no deadlines,
no demands, no schedule.
