Nobody in this land, certainly no Christian, can accept hating on a full-time basis; it is apt to reflect back on the hater. - Mary McCarthy

If you want to be your own master, his father used to say, always be surprised by evil; never anticipate it.

As happens with sports and hobbies, his enjoyment was solemnized by expertise, the rites of comparing, collating, a half-deliberate parody of scholarship like the recitation of batting averages.

We all know in our gut that art educates. In other societies, they're aware of the power it has of speaking directly to the masses, teaching them to be better socialists, better citizens. The trouble is that with us it's fallen into the wrong hands. Forget the speculators. I mean you proud possessors that claim to have a corner in it. This isn't the eighteenth century. The concept of the collector is so rotten by now that it stinks.