liberals and conservatives (part two)

"[Acting] is a little bit of 'Look at me, look at me,' I suppose, but I don't think that's all of it. A lot of the rest of it is just experiencing all of the other stuff that you're going to experience: What is it like to be a killer, what is it like to be a slave, what is it like to be a prince, what is it like to be Hitler? How do you play that? Where do you find that in yourself? I think it's the reason that most artists tend to be liberal as opposed to conservative. There are more conservative liberals and there are more liberal conservatives, but it's very hard to walk in other people's shoes and not have a little more understanding of what it's like, in a certain way, if you spend your life being other people and trying to see the world through their eyes. In some way all liberal arts teach you compassion—they can't avoid that."

—Sydney Pollack, from the documentary Character (2009)

liberals and conservatives

"Whenever I feel bad, I go to the library and read controversial periodicals. Though I do not know whether I am a liberal or a conservative, I am nevertheless enlivened by the hatred which one bears the other. In fact, this hatred strikes me as one of the few signs of life remaining in the world. This is another thing about the world which is upside-down: all the friendly and likable people seem dead to me; only the haters seem alive."

—from Walker Percy's first novel, The Moviegoer (1961)