Beauty is nature’s way of acting at a distance.

Dumbing down takes many forms: art that is good for you, museums that flatter you, universities that increase your self-esteem. Culture, after all, is really about you.

The arts, like language, emerged spontaneously and universally in similar forms across cultures, employing imaginative and intellectual capacities that had clear survival value.

Why do humans make art? It's how we evolved.

I try to figure out - intellectually, philosophically, psychologically - what the experience of beauty is.

The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.

Salvador Dali has been called kitsch, but, although some of this work may be grotesque, its brazenly self-conscious bad taste saves it from being true kitsch, which always strives to please.

Once kitsch is interpreted ironically, it ceases to be kitsch

Solemnity and a complete absence of irony also mark kitsch.

It's a grave mistake in publishing, whether you're talking about Internet or print publication, to try to play to a limited repertoire of established reader interests.

There is always more we can do in ministry, but God is not asking 'Can you do more?'. He is asking 'Do you love me?' Some of those extras are not always as vital as we think them to be.

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

Don't wait. The time will never be just right.

Murals in restaurants are on a par with the food in museums.

Maybe there are some things we were put on this earth not to know.

Most people, even in simple risky situations, don't behave the way the theory of utility would have them behave.

I re-read a lot of my college writing while we were in rehearsals, and it was so strange. It was wonderful to go back and revisit that part of my life. It did kind of make me hungry for it again.

Love is an affair of credulity.

If you write a hundred short stories and they're all bad, that doesn't mean you've failed. You fail only if you stop writing.

The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple premise: The United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor.