Like gladiator games and pyramid building, opera has always been a gloriously money-losing proposition. It is the most extravagant of arts, requiring the constant support of kings, dictators, plutocrats, and town councils. Box-office success is no solution. San Francisco Opera loses money at every sold-out performance. Sane business practices simply don't suffice. Composer Richard Wagner's patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria, was the ideal operatic angel - very rich and certifiably insane. Mel Brooks' shyster producer Max Bialystock need not have mounted Springtime for Hitler to score a surefire loss. Aida would have done just fine.

Old empires always appeal to modern poets more than new ones.

I can't think of better ways to learn than through pleasure and curiosity. I guess the reason these two qualities play so small a role in formal education is t…

To speak from a particular place and time is not provincialism but part of a writer's identity.

You can't argue with facts and figures. Either people want it, in which case they pay for it, or it's two guys sitting around at the Plaza having a discussion,…

Economists, firstly, regard only one part of man's nature, and treat him simply as a money-making animal; secondly, they disregard the influence of custom, and…

'If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.'