Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.

A neurosis is a secret that you don’t know you are keeping.

Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a Peeping Tom and I will show you the making of a dramatist.

The buttocks are the most aesthetically pleasing part of the body because they are non-functional.

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.

Pearl is a disease of oysters. Levant is a disease of Hollywood.

No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.

All of life is more or less what the French would call s'imposer, to be able to create one's own terms for what one does.

I do not see the E.E.C. [European Economic Community] as a great love affair. It's more like nine middle aged couples with failing marriages meeting at a Brussels hotel for a group grope.

Not content to have the audience in the palm of his hand, he goes one further and clenches his fist.

I love going to the movies and getting Raisinets, a big tub of popcorn and a Coke. That's definitely a guilty pleasure because I can't be doing that all the time.

But a priest's life is not supposed to be well-rounded; it is supposed to be one-pointed - a compass, not a weathercock.

I saw Mussolini tirelessly contemplate a parade of thousands of young men.

The war in Iraq was unwinnable.

Being a cheerful hobbit, he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed. (Of Sam)

I grew up reading comics. I was primarily an 'X-Men' fan, but I definitely dressed up as Spider-Man for Halloween when I was, like, 12 years old. Maybe younger than that.

Painting is the subject of painting.

In its Roman-era setting, for example, Christianity was so different that critics of the time referred to it as a "superstition" (meaning a bogus or dangerous religion).

A basic rule of baking is that, in general, it's almost impossible to make an inedible batch of brownies.

Scientists have been struck by the fact that things that break down virtually never get lost, while things that get lost hardly ever break down.