what society requires from art ... is that it function as an early warning system.

Mythology is like gravity, inconvenient at times, but necessary for cohesion.

Creeds and causal systems have argued with each other for millennia, and even so we and our ancestors have managed to live in a world of differing opinions. Philosophical disputes don't often affect the price of fish or wine.

The common impulse is not to sustain a marriage by finding satisfaction elsewhere, but to end the marriage and set up a new one which will provide the comfort lacking in the first.

Art is a framework, a kind of living trellis, on which public dreaming can shape itself.

Powerful people get away with things. That's one way to demonstrate their difference from the rest of us.

a problem that presents itself as a dilemma carries an unfortunate prescription: to argue instead of act.