American power in the world relies on these ideals of openness and critical debate.
Category Archive: 1937
Everybody says love is about finding the person who is right for me and then everything will be fine. But it’s not like that. It involves work. An old man tells you this!
In chamber music, the audience can hear each instrument and understand (and feel) what the composer and the musicians have in mind as they play.
As any opera fan knows, lawyers and judges do not fare well in most operas. Just consider the productions of ‘Andrea Chenier,’ ‘Aida, Norma,’ ‘Billy Budd,’ ‘Peter Grimes,’ ‘The Crucible,’ ‘Lost in the Stars,’ ‘The Marriage of Figaro,’ ‘The Makropulos Case’ and Wagner’s ‘Ring’ cycle. Around 1810, the theme of justice emerged in opera.
The declaration of love marks the transition from chance to destiny, and that’s why it is so perilous and so burdened with a kind of horrifying stage fright.
At 20 and 30, we are like travelers in a foreign country, reading the guide book to learn how to behave, to learn when the post office is open. Trivia looms important; critical issues fade into a pastel background, unrecognized.
I was put off by people at school – my cabbage wasn’t as good as other people’s, you know, so that put me off.
After ‘Roe v. Wade’ – when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973 – I thought the national conversation about abortion and birth control would be over. It was not.
The most compelling evidence for God’s existence is Christ. If God does not exist, then Christ was the biggest fool who ever lived.
If I decide to be indecisive, that’s my decision.