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

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.

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.

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

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.

I made my name”. What does this mean? It means you fought and won your inner battle against fears and restrictions

And now I'm right back where I started. Sober and miserable.

There are people all over the world who like to write fan letters in the voice of their pet: 'Hello, my name is Fifi and I'm a labrador and I think you're great. Paw paw!'

the voices of our ancestors telling of our glorious past, our culture, and what it means to be an Indian.

Although God believers don't need evolution to be false, atheists need evolution to be true.

You always find the right quote, or the right thing to say to make me believe you love me.

Hope is a strange invention - A Patent of the Heart - In unremitting action Yet never wearing out

I cannot avoid condemning all those who, from self-conceit have the pretension to imitate great artists of the past. If their powers of emotion be weak, their powers of expression will be likewise.

I've worked with a lot of people on music and often times those things don't work out.

The problem of the environment is the extension of good housekeeping of the thinking woman.