"We are an unimportant restlessness of dirt, and yet (Dante Gabriel) Rosetti paints his dead wife Elizabeth, head tilted back on her impossibly slim throat, eyes closed against the golden light surrounding her. Clay looks on clay and understands that it is beautiful. Through us the Cosmos gazes on itself, adores itself, breaks its own heart. Through us matter stares slack-jawed at its own star-dusted countenance and knows incrediously that it knows and knows that it is Universe."