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- Philosophy is supposed to have replaced ritual, just as ritual is supposed to have replaced science — but I wonder if this is not progress, but regress?
- Social media is The Thing in John Carpenter’s film The Thing.
- What should we call the anxiety we feel about being anxious?
- Once you realize how much very good, very accomplished art will be utterly, utterly forgotten… it is hard to continue with your work.
- Let’s close all the art schools — the tuition money would be better spent on supporting the very small handful of real, working artists alive today. So much energy and time is spent convincing young people that they’re special, when plainly, they are not.
- Why get excited about new TV when you haven’t watched every Bergman film? Or Tarkovsky or Ozu and so on. I don’t get it.
- Goethe: “I know very well that we are not all equal, nor can be so; but it is my opinion that he who deems it important to keep aloof from the so-called rabble, in order to maintain their respect, is as much to blame as a coward who hides himself from his enemy because he fears defeat.”
- Elitism is efficiency: it sets priorities, produces clear decisions. People with fuzzy aesthetics, on the other hand, make fuzzy choices. They don’t really know what they want. They wave their hands — call everything subjective. And everything is subjective: but you have to prove it by exercising your subjectivity; putting it to the test.
