We read critics for the perceptions, for what they tell us that we didn't fully grasp when we saw the work. The judgments we can usually make for ourselves.
Artist - musicians, painters, writers, poets, always seem to have had the most accurate perception of what is really going on around them, not the official version or the popular perception of contemporary life.
I think when I started to write The Mysterious Benedict Society that I had that kind of thing in mind - the notion of having to be able to solve puzzles and riddles because enormous stakes rode upon your ability to do that.
Does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?" He replied, "All poets believe it does. And in ages of imagination, this firm persuasion removes mountains; but many are not capable of firm persuasion of anything.
What kind of world would we create if three times a day we activated our compassion and reason as we sat down to eat, if we had the moral imagination and the pragmatic will to change our most fundamental act of consumption?