One way or another we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life and dedicate ourselves to that.

I think it has other roots has to do in part with a general anxiety in contemporary life... nuclear bombs inequality of possibility and chance inequality of goods allotted to us a kind of general racist unjust attitude that is pervasive.

I was very much into buying contemporary art but I've just decided I want to get rid of it all. Not that it's not great art but all of a sudden my mood has changed and I want to go back to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century masters.

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

A sad fact of life lately at the Museum of Modern Art is that when it comes to group shows of contemporary painting from the collection the bar has been set pretty low.

The trend in some of the contemporary movements in art but by no means all seems to deny this ideal and to me appears to lead to a purely decorative conception of painting.

I like things that are kind of eclectic when one thing doesn't go with another. That's why I love Rome. The town itself is that way. It's where Fascist architecture meets classic Renaissance where the ancient bangs up against the contemporary. It has a touch of everything. That's my style and that's what my work is about.

Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a resentment of limits and the passage of time anger at what we can't do fear or even disgust at growing old.

I have a really amazing fan club it's contemporary but it's a little bit old school. There's a lot of connection. I have a fan club president who really responds to people.

A book is sent out into the world and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible Homer Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.