"An idea is a dangerous thing."
    --Cutter, "Antz"

"I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry." --John Cage

"Those who object most violently to the manipulation of behavior make the most vigorous attempts to manipulate minds." --Unknown

"The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." --William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice."

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying." --Woody Allen

"Enshu was complimented by his disciples on the admirable taste he had displayed in the choice of his collection. Said they 'Each piece is such that no one could help admiring. It shows that you had better taste than had Rikyu, for his collection could only be appreciated by one beholder in a thousand.' Sorrowfully Enshu replied: 'This only proves how commonplace I am. The great Rikyu dared to love only those objects which personally appealed to him, whereas I unconsciously cater to the taste of the majority.'" --Okakura Kakuzo, "The Book of Tea"

"The arts live continuously, and they live literally by faith; their nature and their shapes and their uses survive unchanged in all that matters through times of interruption, diminishment, neglect...they can not be destroyed altogether because they represent the substance of faith and the only reality. They are what we find again when the ruins are cleared away." --Katherine Anne Porter.

"There are two kinds of truth; truth that lights the way, and the truth
that warms the heart.  The first of these is science, and the second is
art.  Without art, science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps
in the hands of a plumber.  Without science, art would become a crude
mess of folklore and emotional quackery."
  --Raymond Chandler

"My God!  The English language is a form of communication!  Conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at!  Where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill!  Words aren't only bombs and bullets--no, they're little gifts, containing meanings!."
  --Phillip Roth, "Portnoy's Complaint."

"Censors tend to do what only psychotics do:  they confuse reality with  illusion."
        --David Cronenberg

"There is the view that poetry should improve your life.
I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army."
 --John Ashbery

"Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination."
 --ee cummings

"Until mankind is peaceful enough not to have violence on the news,
there's no point in taking it out of shows
that need it for entertainment value!"
     --Cher, "Clueless"

"Now, now, none of that -- movies don't make psychos...movies just make
psychos more creative!"
     --Scream

"Be quiet.  You're always interrupting me in the middle of my mistakes."
    --Mike Curtiz

"The aim of every authentic artist is not to conform to the history of
art but to release himself from it in order to replace it with his own history."
   --Harold Rosenberg
 
"We know that art is not truth.  Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."
    --Pablo Picasso
 
"Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is
preposterous.  He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and
attacked a hot fudge sundae."
    --Kurt Vonnegut
 
"Fear no Art."
    --The name of an art museum in Sedona

"I saw the movie Godzilla over the weekend.  You know what matters more
than size?  A f---ing script."
    --Dennis Miller, "Dennis Miller Live"

"No great artist ever sees things as they really are.  If he did, he
would cease to be an artist."
    --Oscar Wilde

"The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense."
     - Tom Clancy

"I'm sorry if I offend you. But I don't swear just for the hell of it.
You see, I figure that language is a poor enough means of communication
as it is. So we ought to use all the words we've got. Besides, there are
damned few words that everybody understands."
               -"Drummond" from Inherit the Wind
                      by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee

"People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought
which they avoid. "
     - Soren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
 
 "Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assaults of thought
on the unthinking."
     - John Maynard Keynes