Benjamin Sacks

“it is hard for an empty sack to stand upright””

“I had been to Amsterdam a couple of times with Eric; we loved the museums and the Concertgebouw (it was here that I first heard Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, in Dutch). We loved the canals lined with tall, stepped houses; the old Hortus Botanicus and the beautiful seventeenth-century Portuguese synagogue; the Rembrandtplein with its open-air cafés; the fresh herrings sold in the streets and eaten on the spot; and the general atmosphere of cordiality and openness which seemed peculiar to the city.””

“Leonardo da Vinci and the much younger Michelangelo had often made it clear that they had no respect for each other’s craft. Leonardo disparaged the new trend for portraying overly muscular male nudes”