I do believe states rights was a sound doctrine that got hijacked by some unsavory customers for a while – like, 150 years or so. Im professionally obliged to believe that knowledge is better than ignorance, but some kinds of forgetting are OK with me. – John Shelton Reed
Every book Ive written has been a different attempt to understand something, and the success or failure of the previous one is irrelevant. I write the book I want. – Yann Martel
Because most of my career in the classroom has been at art schools (beginning at Bennington in the 1970s), I am hyper-aware of the often grotesque disconnect between commentary on the arts and the actual practice or production of the arts. – Camille Paglia