Peter Coyote:

“Without provocative talk, coffeehouses and good meeting places, artistic friendships, and a supportive community, art cannot flourish. A second-rate poet may be a first rate critic of another’s work. While history tends to isolate and reward the luminaries of such milieus, it is the scene itself, the weltanschaung, from which the art is generated, which should receive equal credit. Something is in the wind, or entering people through the soles of their feet. Many feel it, but the artist gives it expression. Without comparable receptors in the form of an audience, the artists’ work would be an empty exercise, and so the milieu must be nourished and respect if art and culture are to flourish.”