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.

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

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.

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.

To return to the Might God is to truly rely on Him.

I definitely feel moved and affected after interviews, but not in a way that's anything other than positive. There are moments that make me want to cry, but not in any way I can't handle.

When an architect is asked what his best building is, he usually answers, "The next one."

Life Insurance Motto - Robbing the widows early and orphan.

Man is as full of potential as he is of importance.

A father is someone who can't get on the phone, in the bathroom or out of debt.

No matter where I am on this planet, I am always safe.

We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well - for we will not fight to save what we do not love.

Religion is not in fault.

Great men have been among us; hands that penn'd And tongues that utter'd wisdom--better none