Jazz in itself is not struggling. That is the music itself is not struggling... It's the attitude that's in trouble. My plays insist that we should not forget or toss away our history.

In the West you have always associated the Islamic faith 100 percent with Arab culture. This in itself is a fundamentalist attitude and it is mistaken.

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself but always some manner of life.

An attitude to life which seeks fulfillment in the single-minded pursuit of wealth - in short materialism - does not fit into this world because it contains within itself no limiting principle while the environment in which it is placed is strictly limited.

Could we change our attitude we should not only see life differently but life itself would come to be different.

An art whose medium is language will always show a high degree of critical creativeness for speech is itself a critique of life: it names it characterizes it passes judgment in that it creates.

The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.

An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.

There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.

When museums are built these days architects directors and trustees seem most concerned about social space: places to have parties eat dinner wine-and-dine donors. Sure these are important these days - museums have to bring in money - but they gobble up space and push the art itself far away from the entrance.