Where do you learn how to act? Not at church. America is a lot more like pagan Rome than we think. We still sacrifice to objects to gain our social goals.

When you really respect somebody who does something different from you, your respect is for the quality of the job.

I don't think the government should touch art. Governments are risk averse. They encourage risk-averse personalities to be artists.

The idea of political content is irrelevant. Content is irrelevant. I always tell my students, "Never forget you're writing words! You know, word one, word two, word three, word four. The words have to be organized. Nothing else does."

It used to be that if you stood in front of a painting you didn't understand, you'd have some obligation to guess. Now you don't.

Gossip is the currency of the discourse, so you should shut up about yourself. Never confess, never explain, never apologize, and never complain.

I have no evangelical feelings about art at all. I despise art education. Art doesn't lend itself to education. There is no knowledge there. It's a set of propositions about how things should look.