1
Don’t wear your learning too lightly. It may fly off in violent conditions that are so common now.
2
The world doesn’t have any compassion for the artist when he most needs it, but is too generous when he needs it least.
3
Films are great. There’s money, women, power, fame, freedom, emotion. But, I can’t work the process of making sausages. You need a big factory and a lot of hands.
4
I believe in home schooling. For adults.
5
The worst thing is to be beaten comprehensively by yourself. Look at that poor soul, Robert Frank. Under-perform first up!
6
Everything has been done forever. Drawings begat pictures. Poetry begat prose. Theater begat cinema. Nothing is the ‘new’ art. Only the newest. And that’s not much to crow about.
7
Harold Bloom is no more a man. He has turned himself into a great, grieving mound of tears. He needed to for his criticism. What a good critic he is.
8
Nobody likes the age that they are in. The ones that fit want to have lived in an age before, and the ones that don’t want to live in a future that they’ve created.
9
Another thing that religion gives us: many reasons to despise and belittle ourselves. A necessary human trait for the best of us. You want to start out unworthy. Tommy Wilhelm is a good, but failed, test case. So is Marmeladov, that wily ascetic.
10
If you can’t convincingly argue for the opposite view of a position that you hold then you don’t really understand what’s going on. Some tests: argue both sides of why male gang rape is ok; next: rape of a female by a male; next, child rape. Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a position. That would just be immature.
Posted 2 years ago
