What I lack is the spiritual basis which under girded Romantic painting. We have lost the feeling of God's omnipresence in Nature. For us, everything is empty. Yet, these paintings [of a. o. Caspar David Friedrich] are still there. They still speak to us. We continue to love them, to use them, to have need of them.

p. 109, note 62 - 'Doubt and belief in painting' (2003)