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

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.

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.

It is the Master who comes to the door of his student when the student is ready and the Master knows all the truth of his student

Courage in danger is half the battle.

I'm somebody who likes codes and ciphers and chases and artwork and architecture, and all the things you find in a Robert Langdon thriller.

I couldn't see well enough to play (baseball) when I was a boy, so they gave me a special job - they made me an umpire.

At four in the afternoon, I submitted to be more vile and proclaimed in the highways the glad tidings of salvation.

...My sister Doreena who never lifted a royal finger growing up because she had the heart defect that we later found out was a fly on the X-ray machine.

My dad always had this little sign on his desk: 'The bigger your head is, the easier your shoes are to fill'. He really drilled that in.

The criminal classes are so close to us that even the policemen can see them.

In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.

To hold a testimony, one must bear it often and live worthy of it.