We Are Ruled By Quotations.

Our Task Is Not To Find The Maximum Amount Of Content In A Work Of Art, Mush Less To Squeeze More Content Out Of The Work Than Is Already There. Our Task Is To Cut Back On Content So We Can See The Thing At All. The Aim Of All Commentary On Art Now Should Be To Make Works Of Art - And, By Analogy, Our Own Experience - More, Rather Than Less, Real To Us.

Ours Is A Society In Which Secrets Of Private Life That, Formerly, You Would Have Given Nearly Anything To Conceal, You Now Clamor To Get On A Television Show To Reveal.

Part Of The Puzzle, Surely, Lies In The Disconnect Between Official Rhetoric And Lived Realities. Americans Are Constantly Extolling “traditions”; Litanies To Family Values Are At The Center Of Every Politician’s Discourse. And Yet The Culture Of America Is Extremely Corrosive Of Family Life, Indeed Of All Traditions Except Those Redefined As “identities” That Fit In The Larger Patterns Of Distinctiveness, Cooperation, And Openness To Innovation.

Most Of My Reading Is Rereading.

Quotation Is A Method Of Appropriation Which Is Invincible, I Think. It's Not A Procedure Which Displeases Me, Contrary To Recycling.