“It seems obvious, looking back, that the artists of Weimar Germany and Leninist Russia lived in a much more attenuated landscape of media than ours, and their reward was that they could still belie...”

“It is hard to think of any work of art of which one can say 'this saved the life of one Jew, one Vietnamese, one Cambodian'. Specific books, perhaps; but as far as one can tell, no paintings or scu...”

“Political stress is always apt to shrink the private arena and attach it on to the public”

“Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.”

“The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then ...”

“What has our culture lost in 1980 that the avant-garde had in 1890? Ebullience, idealism, confidence, the belief that there was plenty of territory to explore, and above all the sense that art, in ...”

“It's not objective. It's subjective. Katya hooks her bra behind her back. It's just what you think, not the truth.”

“Many of my colleagues operate from a mistaken notion that rational thought can come from only objective discourse, devoid of emotions. To me, speaking from the heart and with passion is not antagon...”

“In the history of the world, a whole story has never been told.”

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”

“My story is of such marvel that if it were written with a needle on the corner of an eye, it would yet serve as a lesson to those who seek wisdom.”

“There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what that means, simply take yourself - in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love - and multiply by 1,198,500,00...”