The fact of the matter is basic and ineluctable: we need these lists. The year would not be complete without them. The year would not make sense without them.

Americans love gumption. We believe that stupid ideas become brilliant ones if you just keep working on them with bullish tenacity.

The real reason to wear the mask is to spare others the discomfort of seeing your facial expression ... To make it possible to see without seeing.

After the war, we were not so much disillusioned by our prospects as giddily illusioned by them.

... He was free to be less than perfect, which is more interesting than perfect.

It is more important for a critic to be interesting than to be right.

It's sad to think there was a time when people lined up around the block to see Bergman movies… and how unimaginable that is now.

Want to predict the future of innovation? Simply predict the future of attractiveness, effectiveness, and desirability. Then act accordingly.

Annual budget of Miami's police department, expressed as a percentage of the production cost of the film "Miami Vice": 83

The avant-garde isn't what it used to be.

Perhaps there is something reassuring about exhibiting the quaint beliefs of previous eras.

The Internet ... plays to [a] powerful force in modern America and one that undermines the movies: narcissism.

The formula is simple: two people, a few instruments, 88 minutes and not a single false note.

It is, I suspect, a film to return to, like a country waiting to be explored: a maze of dead ends and new life.

They were dense and crisp and precise but also full of character: his mouse conveys something fundamentally mouse-ish, his ant has an essential ant-ness. His insects were especially beautiful.

The Rest Is Noise is cultural history the way cultural history should be written: a single strong narrative operating on many levels at once. What more do you want from a book? That it be intelligently, artfully, and lucidly written? It’s those things, too.