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men for men, monotonous if you will, but only as are wax cells laden with honey, a place of meetings and exchange, where peasants come to sell their produce, and linger to gape and stare at the paintings of a portico... p 129

Maupassant by Francis Steegmuller 1949

p 211-212

"Paris is the artist's dunghill (Maupassant wrote in on of his essays on Louis Bouilhet). It is only there, with his feet on its pavements and his head in its exhilarating tangy air, that he can come to fullest flower. And it is not enough merely to be in Paris: you have to become part of it, quickly get to know its houses, its people, its ideas, its ways and intimate customs, its banter, its wit. Great, strong, full of genius though you may be, if you cannot become Parisian to the marrow you retain a certain awkwardness of talent, a certain something of

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provincialism.

John Russell NYT Arts & Leisure Jan 22.84 p 1

Walking along the streets that are part of the New York art world, you will everywhere feel a tingling sensation, as if energy were infiltrating your toes. The source of that energy is other people's ambition, bulging up through the soles of your feet.

Ambition in New York is ferocious, un-relenting, implacable, and it bubbles today as never before.

To burn out, whether as artist, dealer, collector, curator or critic, is never agreeable. To be seen to have burned out is even worse.

Maupassant. Steegmuller

"The author fires a hard eye on some small spot of human life, usually some ugly, dreary, dreary, shabby, sordid one, takes up the