Never the grave gives back what it has won!
The function of art is to bring people into greater touch with reality, and yet our movie houses and family rooms are jammed with people after as much reality-removal as they can get.
The arts are the only things that separate us from the other animals. The arts are not decorative. . . . They are essential to our comprehension of consciousness and ourselves.
If you're willing to fail interestingly, you tend to succeed interestingly.
The condition of the theater is always an accurate measure of the cultural health of a nation. A play always exists in the present tense (if it is a valuable one), and its music -- its special noise -- is always contemporary. The most valuable function of the theater as an art form is to tell us who we are, and the health of the theater is determined by how much of that we want to know.
School curricula that ignore the arts produce highly educated Barbarians
I think I was probably wondering, having looked at human beings for a long time, wondering if evolution ever took place. And I still have my doubts.
Man is a willful and covetous animal, who makes use of his intellect to satisfy his inclinations, but who cares nothing for truth, who rebels against personal discipline, who hates disinterested thought and the idea of self-education. Wisdom offends him, because it rouses in him disturbance and confusion, and because he will not see himself as he is.
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. ' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
The irony of conversing with a stranger is that your individual lives always look very different and personal, but then you strip away the nuances to find a common likeness buried inside of diversity. Take away money and geography and we’re all just flesh and blood and soul. We’re all dealing with sin and forgiveness, love and hate, glory and shame.
A Protestant has seldom any mercy shown him, and a Jew, who turns Christian, is far from being secure.