There will be this mix of people like me who write for major national newspapers and amateur critics, practitioner critics, whose primary way of distributing what they talk about is through blogs and on the web. The line between professional and amateur criticism will become increasingly blurred. The problem here is that if you want to do this for a living, you have to be able to earn a living doing it.

I should also mention that the Neue Galerie is piping music into the galleries where "Klee and America" is hanging, a practice for which vulgar is not even close to the word. Yes, I like Schumann's Carnaval, but I'm damned if I know why anybody thinks the paintings of Paul Klee profit from being viewed with Carnaval playing in the background.

The problem with the Jude Law "Hamlet" was simply that it wasn't unpredictable, that it was a very down-the-center modern production. You wouldn't go to the theater expecting to see an old-fashioned "Hamlet" where everybody wears an old fashioned costume. You don't get points for putting on a "Hamlet" where everybody dresses in black. I've seen that one several times. But again, it's not that it has to be new, it simply that it has to be different, fresh, that it doesn't bore, that it doesn't make me - I don't feel as I'm watching it that I know where it's going to go.

(R)eality TV (is) a medium dedicated to the proposition that with the help of judicious editing, carefully chosen half-wits can hold the attention of millions of their fellow half-wits for weeks on end.

If I ever see another Shakespeare production where somebody drives a Jeep on stage, I'm going to run screaming up the aisle. These tend to be matters of design. I mean, we're seeing a lot of - it's very common to see Shakespeare with automatic weapons, things like that. They are clichés. They're new clichés, but they are clichés. And they're provincial. It's not clever to do Henry V, and have everybody dressed in United Nations soldier's costumes anymore. I've seen that one too. That kind of thing irritates me.

Whether early or late, the Parker novels are all superlative literary entertainments.

I know that luck has a way of happening to people who shoot high, who never sell themselves short.