Jonathan Gash Quotes

#1. Remember preconceptions? Even though I'd landed hoping simply to somehow scrape the transatlantic fare home, I'd been an arrogant swine, imbued with that Old World toffee-nosed attitude: The United States of America's got no culture, not deep down.

Jonathan Gash

#2. I began to enjoy myself: being apoplectic's quite invigorating.

Jonathan Gash

#3. Affluence isn't affluence at all. Hong Kong is the benchmark; everybody else's affluence is mere tat. Until you've experienced that perfume-washed air as polarized glass doors embrace you into a luxury hotel's plush interior, you've only had a dud replica of the real thing.

Jonathan Gash

#4. America's phones are bliss. Their habit of actually working is very disconcerting: Put in a coin, and speak to whoever answers. I truly hope it catches on everywhere.

Jonathan Gash

#5. Fraud is the daughter of greed.

Jonathan Gash

#6. Forgery, being the weirdest form of creativity there is, like antiques, costs lives. Why is it that antiques demand sacrificial victims? Dunno, but if they don't get enough, forgery does. You want proof? Here it is: Once a faker's found out, he dies. Truly. It always happens.

Jonathan Gash

#7. Even gods decay. Like, in 1890 somebody sold off thousands of mummified Ancient Egyptian sacred cats - _for fertilizer_. Get the point? Constancy isn't.

Jonathan Gash

#8. The Theory of Sexual Understanding is mine. I created it. It works between a man and a woman. It's this: Everything's up to her.

Jonathan Gash

#9. Woods are grim places. Farmers shoot squirrels, crows, magpies, and hang them up on trees to warn Mother Nature to get it together or else. Much notice she takes, being in league with God. They're a right pair, more carnage than the rest of us put together.

Jonathan Gash

#10. The exhibition gobsmacked me. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Here was quite a small building, not many people about, getting little attention. And inside they'd pulled together a staggering display of Regency furniture. I've seen most of the stuff that matters. I simply stood there, gaping.

Jonathan Gash