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21 " We are the 'other ones' whom the living significations of the aesthetic seek out. "
― George Steiner , Real Presences
22 " What we must focus, with uncompromising clarity, on the text, on the work of art, on the music before us, is an ethic of common sense, a courtesy of the most robust and refined sort. "
23 " a syllabus is established over time. . . . it represents cultural, social, pedagogic choices which aim at more or less stable consensus. . . . the syllabus is instinct not only with aesthetic but also with political and political-economic motives and valuations. There is a politics in the marketing of the 'classical' as there is a counter-politics in the bartering of the subversive and the anarchic. A canon, on the contrary, is a profoundly personal construct. . . . A canon is the guarded catalogue of that in speech, music and art which houses inside us, which is irrevocably familiar to our homecomings. "