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In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.

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The notion that inspired play (even when audacious, offensive, or obscene) enhances rather than diminishes intellectual vigor and spiritual fulfillmen...more

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Whether a man is a criminal or a public servant is purely a matter of perspective.

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...disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....

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All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously.

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On their sofas of spice and feathers, the concubines also slept fretfully. In those days the Earth was still flat, and people dreamed often of falling...more

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There is a comfort in conformity, a security in control, that is appealing. There is a thrill in domination, and we are all secretly attracted to viol...more

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The longer Ellen Cherry thought about it, the more convinced she became that the mission of the artist in an overtechnologized, overmasculinized socie...more

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Boomer had asked her once, in a telephone call from Virginia, “Why does this stuff, these hand-painted hallucinations that don’t do nothin’ but confus...more

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If there’s a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn’t exist in the world around you, at leas...more

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Mockingbirds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they're born with a song of their own, an innate riff that happens to...more

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Well, Daddy, I used to believe that artists went crazy in the process of creating the beautiful works of art that kept society sane. Nowadays, though,...more

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As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts o...more

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Beauty! Wasn't that what mattered? Beauty was hardly a popular ideal at that jumpy moment in history. The masses had been desensitized to it, the inte...more

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You know a trillion times more about art than me. But I’ve learned that it isn’t necessary to know all that much. You just make what you wanna see, ri...more