Only conservatives believe that subversion is still being carried on in the arts and that society is being shaken by it. Advanced art today is no longer a cause -it contains no moral imperative. There is no virtue in clinging to principles and standards, no vice in selling or in selling out.

No degree of dullness can safeguard a work against the determination of critics to find it fascinating.

The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.

The story of Americans is the story of arrested metamorphoses. Those who achieve success come to a halt and accept themselves as they are. Those who fail become resigned and accept themselves as they are.

The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of art, but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history.

Kitsch is art that follows established rules in a time when all rules in art are put into question by each artist.

Avant-gardism is an addiction that can be appeased only by a revolution in permanence.