I love this statement from The Best American Short Stories 2005 :
Yet entertainment – as I define it, pleasure and all – remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least of feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that seperates each of us from everybody else. The best respone to those who would cheapen and exploit it is not to disparage or repudiate but to reclaim entertainment as a job fit for artists and for audiences, a two-way exchange of attention, experience, adn the universal hunger for connection.
It helps me deal with the questions/conflicts I have as a performer.