Books don't live and die by awards. You don't listen to an Hector Lavoe album because it won some awards.
It is only through contact and comparison that the relative value or worthlessness of the various cultural elements can be clearly and critically seen and understood.
No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing.
So great is the worth of Dostoevsky that to have produced him is by itself sufficient justification for the existence of the Russian people in the world: and he will bear witness for his country-men at the last judgement of the nations.
We need to have a view that culture has a value in itself, not just in terms of a social and economic value.
Every country has the writers she requires and deserves, which is why Nicaragua, in two hundred years of literacy, has produced one writer-a mediocre poet.
If I put a value on my music, and no one's prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan; it can't work.
When a country loses its identity, it no longer knows what it is or where it comes from and what its real worth is. So it dissolves.
There's this de facto assumption that for something to have value, it has to be economically self-supporting - which imposes a very low ceiling on a culture.
