“[I]t was [Barnett] Newman who made the famously wry remark, “Aesthetics is for the artist as ornithology is for the birds,”

“Aesthetics is to artists as ornithology is to birds.”

“Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”

“You remarked once in a fit of pique you had made me famous. You were wrong, my dear. You have made me.”

“One of the most remarkable of all ornithological discoveries was the realisation that birds in temperate regions undergo enormous seasonal changes in their internal organs...Perhaps the most far-reaching discovery relating to these changes was the finding in the 1970s that parts of the brain also varied in size across the year...The centres in the avian brain that control the acquisition and delivery of song in male birds shrink at the end of the breeding season and grow again in the following year.”

“I couldn't have written [What Good Are The Arts?] because I--and I'm not alone, by any means--do not have Carey's breadth of reading, nor his calm, wry logic, which enables him to demolish the arguments of just about everyone who has ever talked tosh about objective aesthetic principles. And this group, it turns out, includes anyone who has ever talked about objective aesthetic principles.”