Dame Quotes - page 2
Europe' in anything other than the geographical sense is a wholly artificial construct. It makes no sense at all to lump together Beethoven and Debussy, Voltaire and Burke, Vermeer and Picasso, Notre Dame and St Paul's, boiled beef and bouillabaisse, and portray them as elements of a 'European' musical, philosophical, artistic, architectural or gastronomic reality. If Europe charms us, as it has so often charmed me, it is precisely because of its contrasts and contradictions, not its coherence and continuity.
Margaret Thatcher
And then the spring of [19]'48 I toddled off to Paris on a Liberty ship... Yes, and arriving in Le Havre on that Liberty ship and seeing all those-the sun was coming up-and seeing all those ships sunk.. It was hardly... I mean, war, war, war, war.... I went to Paris, and I stayed with Zuka and Louis [Mitelberg] [her husband then, the cartoonist 'Tim']. And I looked for a place-and found it on Rue Gallande. Across the river was Notre Dame. That was all of four dollars a month, with a hole on the stairs as a toilet and a spigot with cold water and one light-bulb. That was all the electricity there was. But this view, I mean, God!... Saint Julien le Pauvre [Greek Orthodox Church, oldest in Paris] was right in front of me. And so I painted there.
Joan Mitchell