The maxims for success laid out by the powerful are never much good as guides for those who aren't powerful.

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

The surprise of animals... in and out, cats and dogs and a milk goat and chickens and guinea hens, all taken for granted, as if man was intended to live on terms of friendly intercourse with the rest of creation instead of huddling in isolation on the fourteenth floor of an apartment house in a city where animals occurred behind bars in the zoo.

we expect definitions to tell us not only what is, but what to do about it; to show us how the world fits together and how its different parts connect and work. ... A label is the first step toward action.

The idea of power as a possession, whose asset can be banked and drawn on when needed, comes easy to a society whose rules grow out of the methods of finance capitalism.

If one is going to change things, one has to make a fuss and catch the eye of the world.

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