Simon De Pury

“On the drive back to the airport, Wilson, reveling in our triumph with his guilty schoolboy grin, recounted the fable of the mountain walk of two contenders for a woman’s hand with the lady’s father. When the father slipped, one of the suitors leapt into the crevasse to save his life. They kept walking. Then the second suitor slipped, and the father leapt into the crevasse to save the suitor’s life. Who got the lady’s hand? The second man, the rescuee rather than the savior. The father, Wilson explained, had more invested in the man he saved than in the man who saved him. Likewise the Constable-Maxwells loved feeling superior to the man they had defeated in this high-stakes match. In time, their time, they consigned the Diatreta Cup to Wilson. There were, strange to say, no more croquet matches after the sale.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade

“The most memorable of these was the Kronenhalle in Zurich, the most famous “art restaurant” in the world. The Kronenhalle is to Zurich what the Four Seasons is to New York, what Harry’s Bar is to Venice, what Brasserie Lipp is to Paris: a power venue, where you can see everyone you need to see. In the past you could have seen the two Alberts, Einstein and Schweitzer, Thomas Mann, James Joyce, and every captain of finance who ever visited Zurich, the city of gnomes.”
― Simon De Pury, The Auctioneer: Adventures in the Art Trade