In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

That's what a community is: taking for granted certain assumptions, not having to start from zero every time. This is no longer true.

The traditional metaphor for a spiritual investigation is that of the voyage or the journey. From this image I must dissociate myself. I do not consider myself a voyager, I have preferred to stand still.

What makes me feel strong? Being in love and work. I must work.

The young-old polarization and the male-female polarization are perhaps the two leading stereotypes that imprison people.

Any disease that is treated as a mystery and acutely enough feared will be felt to be morally, if not literally, contagious.

Art today is a new kind of instrument, an instrument for modifying consciousness and organizing new modes of sensibility . . . . Artists have had to become self-conscious aestheticians: continually challenging their means, their materials and methods.