The English have a wellspring of comedy that will never be exhausted: the combination of bestial urges and excellent manners.

The movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype--a metaphor for itself.

I'm more encouraged by the saplings: new music groups, tiny new venues, entrepreneurial musician-composers who aren't waiting to be discovered but are instead building their own Establishment.

A critic often has to play the role of coroner, dissecting a work to find out why it died (or never lived).

Let me tell you, if your marriage is in trouble, skip the therapist and find a psycho. Nothing brings people together faster.

Despite some standout events, 2012 was demoralizing. The Met felt adrift, and New York City Opera couldn't claw its way back to artistic health.

Russell Crowe is normally an actor who disappears so far into his characters you'd swear his DNA has been altered.

It's easy to say "This year in art sucked." After all, about 85 percent of all shows of contemporary art are bad. But 85 percent of all art made in the Renaissance was bad.

Some reviewed 'The Master' on their knees, and while I respected its distinctive discordancy - can a movie be at once feverish and glacial? - I was unmoved.

The movie's only serious criticism is reserved for Baker's television network, which doesn't think Americans care about Afghanistan - kind of hypocritical given this film's lack of substance.

I have a female colleague who gets annoyed that Tina Fey seems to go out of her way in her movies to deride her looks, as if she weren't such an attractive woman.

Sometimes hard times teach us more.. In Learning Phase!!

Arsenal are a great team. But we lifted the trophy eight times in 11 years.

The general election's taking place today in Iraq, so I guess that means we're one step closer to being there for another 10 years.

Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)

Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?

I got a dog-training book. It says Grendel needs mental stimulation, so I tried to train him, but I think he must be retarded.

Empowerment is all about letting go so that others can get going.

Happiness is the natural state of our being

I've had to learn that not everybody does things my way. But I do expect the absolute best of everyone around me, and I'm disappointed when people don't expect that of themselves.

I must say that, on the whole, I prefer fiction to poetry.