Al forms of consensus about ''great'' books and ''perennial'' problems, once stabilized, tend to deteriorate eventually into something philistine. The real life of the mind is always at the frontiers of ''what is already known.'' Those great books don't only need custodians and transmitters. To stay alive, they also need adversaries. The most interesting ideas are heresies.

To paraphrase several sages: Nobody can think and hit someone at the same time.

Art is seduction, not rape.

Wherever people feel safe — they will be indifferent.

The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.

Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.

It hurts to love. It's like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.