The life, no matter how traumatic, never explains the work, if the work is any good. W. B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, Doris Lessing, and Saul Bellow variously believed in faeries, funny money, flying saucers, and orgone energy accumulation, but so have millions of other people who never got around to writing even a mediocre poem or novel.

I don't have a sense of sanctuary. I don't have a place where I think I can go. I once went to the famous Kyoto temple with the Zen garden, the gravel, the lit…

Where did all the liberals go? If the gringos in their villas dream at all, it's of sugar-plum stock options. Never mind social justice, what happened to habea…

The culture as a whole is losing its individual notes, its diversity. And this is: it's not only sad. It's devastating. It's devastating because routine langua…

Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.

Art is anything you can do well. Anything you can do with Quality.

It is now life and not art that requires the willing suspension of disbelief.