I have a female colleague who gets annoyed that Tina Fey seems to go out of her way in her movies to deride her looks, as if she weren't such an attractive woman.

The movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype--a metaphor for itself.

I'm more encouraged by the saplings: new music groups, tiny new venues, entrepreneurial musician-composers who aren't waiting to be discovered but are instead building their own Establishment.

A critic often has to play the role of coroner, dissecting a work to find out why it died (or never lived).

Let me tell you, if your marriage is in trouble, skip the therapist and find a psycho. Nothing brings people together faster.

The English have a wellspring of comedy that will never be exhausted: the combination of bestial urges and excellent manners.

Despite some standout events, 2012 was demoralizing. The Met felt adrift, and New York City Opera couldn't claw its way back to artistic health.

Russell Crowe is normally an actor who disappears so far into his characters you'd swear his DNA has been altered.

It's easy to say "This year in art sucked." After all, about 85 percent of all shows of contemporary art are bad. But 85 percent of all art made in the Renaissance was bad.

Some reviewed 'The Master' on their knees, and while I respected its distinctive discordancy - can a movie be at once feverish and glacial? - I was unmoved.

The movie's only serious criticism is reserved for Baker's television network, which doesn't think Americans care about Afghanistan - kind of hypocritical given this film's lack of substance.

Live and learn and pass it on.

The patient and active virtues of a soldier are insensibly nursed in the habits and discipline of a pastoral life.

Gold has an almost atavistic lure. People feel it has a panacea effect.

If you go to Gettysburg and take the time, maybe take a tour, maybe just drive around, read some of the monuments, read some of the plaques, you will come away changed.

A mistake is valuable if you do four things with it: recognize it, admit it, learn from it, forget it

I work out the other bits, too, but I need to know what I look like, very early on. And then it's like a template; I'll fill that person out. If I get that out of the way, then I'm all right.

You should know that I lead, not follow

Whatever enchants also guides and protects.

I have ambitions I want to fulfil, to enjoy more success with Brazil.

I started adding up all the things I couldn't do.