“Do you need an audience to create work, or does not having an audience liberate you and make you a truer artist?”

“The choreographer and the dancer must remember
that they reach the audience through the eye.
It's the illusion created which convinces the audience,
much as it is with the work of a magician”

“Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.”

“The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”

“Perhaps if you were to refrain from deploying the phrase ‘ignorantbuffoon’ with a liberality most writers reserve for ‘it’ and ‘the,’you would find a readier audience.”

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”