Terry Teachout Best Quotations

At its best, no art form is more thrilling than grand opera, yet none is at greater risk of following the dinosaurs down the cold road to extinction.

For my part, I like live theater best when it's taut, concentrated and intimate.

For the critic, the word 'best' is like a grenade without a pin: Toss it around too freely, and you're likely to get your hand blown off.

I think that most of the best movies made in America in the 20th century were crime dramas, screwball comedies and westerns.

I don't know anybody in the opera business who isn't worried sick about how best to reach out to underpaid millennials who were suckled on the new on-demand pop culture, which supplies them with cheap, unchallenging amusement around the clock.

Life usually tells the best stories - but sometimes it takes an artist to show us what they mean.

Critics at their best are independent voices; people take seriously their responsibility to see as many things as they can see, put them in the widest possible perspective, educate their readers. I really do think of myself as a teacher.

It may well be, of course, that America's pop culture is on balance better than our high art. I don't think so, but you can certainly make a case that the best of it aspires to a degree of aesthetic and emotional seriousness that is directly comparable to all but the very greatest works of high art.