Salingerspent ten years writing "The Catcher in the Rye" and "the rest of his life regretting it," observe David Shields and Shane Salerno in a new biography and related documentary.
Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer with which to shape it," declared Bertolt Brecht.
Herodotus describes flying snakes, fox-sized ants that unearthed gold dust, men with the heads of dogs and others with no heads at all whose eyes are set in their chests. But, as with reports of the intervention of the gods, he often distances himself by remarking that he is not sure if he can believe what he has been told.
What price the Louvre, the Parthenon or Yellowstone National Park?
Imagine a place run by film stars – vain, power-hungry, paranoid, adored. Imagine they had been in charge not for the duration of a reality television series but for decades in a territory containing 72m people and one of the world's largest cities. It would be a disaster zone, wouldn't it?
Does Cannes need to shock?
Horace Walpole always regretted the export to Russia of the legendary British art collection, fearing that it would be "burnt in a wooden palace on the first insurrection". But by a twist of fate, the sale saved the paintings. In 1789, ten years after they left, the Picture Gallery at Houghton was destroyed by fire.
"It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture," observed Thomas Edison in 1913, predicting that books would soon be obsolete in the classroom.
There is now nothing you can imagine that cannot be shown by Hollywood.
To judge a painter, you have to wait at least two centuries.
Such schmaltzy songs as "White Christmas", "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" and "Let it Snow" were all by Jewish musicians.
The Library of Alexandria – built during the 3rd century BC to house the accumulated knowledge of centuries – reputedly had a copy (often the only copy) of every book in the world at the time. It burned to the ground sometime between Julius Caesar's conquest of Egypt in 48BC and the Muslim invasion in 640AD. Some historians believe the loss of the Alexandrian library, along with the dissolution of its huge community of scribes and scholars, created the conditions for the Dark Ages that descended across Europe as the Roman empire crumbled from within. A millennium of misery ensued, with ignorance and poverty the rule until the Renaissance dawned.