« Luckily, the quidams are still dying. You and me. And always before the hour. So there will still be room for a Bacon, a Balthus, a Cremonini. A Robert Bresson or a Kubrick. All imagiers who want to win the race against the beggar. As long as there is death, there is hope - aesthetic. (p 37) »

« The birth of the picture part connected with death. But if the archaic image springs from the tombs, it is in rejection of nothingness and to prolong life. Plastic is a domesticated terror. It follows that the more death fades from social life, the less alive the image is, and the less vital our need for images. (p16) »

« The Faustian, it is understood, is a white man, a man in a hurry, a manager who loves graphs and Excel paintings. He is an urban, a startupper, a man of initiative and industry. The other way around itches and the next day inspires him. Quite the opposite of the dung beetle stuck to its manure and the return of the seasons. He does not hide his money under the mattress, he risks, plays and wins He has faith in progress, not without reason, since he constantly diminishes, by his tricks and prototypes, the pain of living. The master of clocks has campaign plans called growth forecasts because he is a warrior, and staff meetings, called G8 or G20, because he sees big. In all, it measures performance, demands the maximum, and brandishes the stopwatch. Clearly, he is the man of the Spirit, as Valery defines him: not a "flatus vocis", an immaterial and fuzzy gas, but a "practical power of transformation of reality", active and proactive. The Spirit, yes, as opposed to Nature. These old-fashioned terms, considered not admissible by our master decoconstructors, we must assume them, with or without their haughty capital. Here will be heard here, prosaically, by nature, in the stoic way, all the things that do not depend on us, and by spirit, the elaborate system of forces that apply to make them depend on us. These are not two immutable metaphysical blocks, since in the summer and as the mind increases its means of intervention, everything we have not taken - nature - must retreat. To reduce to the strictest minimum the ancient force of things, this was the raison d'être, and in the short term, the success of which opens airlines, shaves the living hedges and asphalts the dirt roads. Who re-groups the plots, cleans the grove, improves productivity, makes his additions and claims a bonus. Which, in town, cuts avenues and replaces alleyways with esplanades. Everything that hinders and enclaves, weighs and impesses, the unbearable - Legacy, Tradition, Location. No wire to the paw. To respect is to drool. His duty is to create unheard of. Year I of the Republic. Year I of the new man. "From the past let's clean up", the ozone layer, groundwater and redwoods too, and tomorrow the International will be the human race. Nothing is more reprehensible, in his eyes, and more retro, than Epictet's injunction: "Do not pretend to change the nature of things." He, precisely, is his job, his pride, his roadmap. »