“For the machine meant the conquest of horizontal space. It also meant ...” — Robert Hughes Quote

“For the machine meant the conquest of horizontal space. It also meant a sense of that space which few people had experienced before – the succession and superimposition of views, the unfolding of landscape in flickering surfaces as one was carried swiftly past it, and an exaggerated feeling of relative motion (the poplars nearby seeming to move faster than the church spire across the field) due to parallax. The view from the train was not the view from the horse. It compressed more motifs into the same time. Conversely, it left less time in which to dwell on any one thing.”

“Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.”

“A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop.”

“Transportation made sublimation literal. It conveyed evil to another world.”

“It was a secular cathedral, dedicated to the rites of travel.”

“In my office in Jerusalem, there's an ancient seal. It's a signet ring of a Jewish official from the time of the Bible. The seal was found right next to the Western Wall, and it dates back 2,700 years, to the time of King Hezekiah. Now, there's a name of the Jewish official inscribed on the ring in Hebrew. His name was Netanyahu.”

“So the year went on, a dark year, though now each day had that one bright hour at its dawn.”

“I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short time of space.”

“In the darkness of night,”

“His alarm clock ticked by the head of the bed. He gazed at its whitish face, the hands both drawing downward. There were no clocks, there. There were no hours. It was not the river of time flowing that moved the clock's hands forward; their mechanism moved them. Seeing them move men said, Time is passing, passing, but they were fooled by the clocks they made. It is we who pass through time, Hugh thought.”

“For our last shall be the recorder of eternity.”