“Yes, it’s sad–tragic, really–that great theatrical experiences are destined to fade from memory. But I also know that it is because of the inexorable perishability of such productions that younger performers, directors and designers are able to reimagine the classics in ways that make visual and emotional sense to successive generations of audiences…”

“Except for The Night of the Hunter, Mr. Laughton’s post-Galileo career is no longer widely remembered save by scholars. But enough of it survives on sound recordings and kinescopes to prove that F. Scott Fitzgerald was all wet when he claimed that ‘there are no second acts in American lives.’ Charles Laughton, who moved from England to America to seek fame and fortune and came perilously close to losing his soul along the way, had a second act that redeemed all that came before it…”

“Most of the modern novelists who have placed matters of faith at the center of their work have been, like Graham Greene, C.S. Lewis, François Mauriac and Flannery O’Connor, believers of one sort or another. But in every other branch of art, great works of devotional art have been created by skeptics, not a few of whom were fire-breathingly militant about their doubt…”

“To look back on the year of ‘Follies’ is to be reminded that it’s revivals, not new work, that make American theater go ’round these days…”

“It’s impossible to talk intelligibly about William F. Buckley Jr., without talking about his personality. Indeed, it’s far more important to talk about his personality than about his philosophy, which was anything but original. He was a journalist, not a systematic thinker, and in addition to his personal charm, his other special gift was the ability to popularize the ideas of others. The Brits call such folk ‘publicists,’ and Buckley was, if such a thing exists, a publicist of genius…”

“Nowadays most educated people would just as soon stay home and watch Breaking Bad as shell out a hundred bucks to see a Broadway play–assuming that there are any plays on Broadway worth seeing, which long ago ceased to be a safe bet. So if you can’t make any money writing for the stage, why bother? Putting aside the obvious attraction of being able to make up your own characters, I can think of one excellent reason: You meet the nicest people…”

“Clement Greenberg and Virgil Thomson were critics of the first rank. Indeed, Mr. Greenberg was one of the most deservedly influential art critics of the 20th century, while Mr. Thomson is generally regarded as the finest classical-music critic ever to have written for a U.S. newspaper. The world of art would be the poorer had they chosen not to write about it—but for as long as their work is read, some people will wonder whether they could be bought…”

“Sure, it’s interesting to read about how Verdi and Britten turned three of Shakespeare’s greatest plays into equally great operas, but wouldn’t it be even more interesting to see the plays and operas side by side? Needless to say, such an undertaking would be both cruelly expensive and logistically nightmarish, but it could be done in a festival setting—and New York’s Lincoln Center Festival and Washington’s Kennedy Center are both capable of making it happen…”