Without memory there is no culture. Without memory there would be no civilization no society no future.

When future archaeologists dig up the remains of California they're going to find all of those gyms their scary-looking gym equipment and they're going to assume that we were a culture obsessed with torture.

People who own property feel a sense of ownership in their future and their society. They study save work strive and vote. And people trapped in a culture of tenancy do not.

The fact that the Kardashians could be more popular than a show like 'Mad Men' is disgusting. It's a super disgusting part of our culture but I still find it funny to make a joke about it.

I think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.

What gay culture is before it is anything else before it is a culture of desire or a culture of subversion or a culture of pain is a culture of friendship.

To her audience Janis Joplin has remained a symbol artifact and reminder of late Sixties youth culture. Her popularity never derived from her musical ability but from her capacity to link her fantasies of freedom and immortality with ours.

A culture without property or in which creators can't get paid is anarchy not freedom.

When we through our educational culture through the media through the entertainment culture give our children the impression that human beings cannot control their passions we are telling them in effect that human beings cannot be trusted with freedom.

Widespread state control over art and culture has left no room for freedom of expression in the country. For more than 60 years anyone with a dissenting opinion has been suppressed. Chinese art is merely a product: it avoids any meaningful engagement. There is no larger context. Its only purpose is to charm viewers with its ambiguity.