
An ongoing digital archive of 1,399 items (and counting) proving that I read, I saw, and I actually paid attention.


For this ambitious inquiry, Grau traveled to Williamstown, New York City, Vienna, Oxford, Ampthill, Moscow, Berlin and London to speak to the people working behind the scenes in the Western world’s greatest museums. Focusing on the 1960s to the 2000s, Grau details the stories of these cultural institutions from the perspectives of those who know them.
“When in doubt, say something in French.”



“I know something even more than my wildest dreams are just around the corner. I believe in true love. I believe God has a plan. A raw, honest life is the only way… I love living in the mystery.”
“The lonely have often found comfort outdoors. In The Living Mountain, an unfussy meditation on Scotland’s Cairngorm mountains, Nan Shepherd writes: ‘Often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him.’”
“That’s a tough one. I’d have to say April 25th. Because it’s not too hot, not too cold, all you need is a light jacket.”
“Every man who marries, marries the wrong woman. True suffering cometh when a man is in love with the woman he cannot marry.”


“When the nuns came to be blessed by the Patriarch, who on special holy days, went by my house in a motorboat, I detached the phallus of the horseman and hid it in a drawer. I also did this on certain days when I had to receive stuffy visitors, but occasionally I forgot, and when confronted with this phallus found myself in great embarrassment. The only thing to do in such cases was to ignore it. In Venice a legend spread that I had several phalluses of different sizes, like spare parts, which I used on different occasions.”
“It was supposed to be a tribute to BeyoncĂ©, but people did not take it that way.”

“I’m Petra’s father.”
