"Writers want to summarize: What does this mean? What did we learn from this? That's a very 19th-century way of thinking about art, because it assumes that it should make our lives better or teach us something"

This quote by Laurie Anderson is a review of the 19th century way of thinking about art. She is recommending that the idea of art needing to make our lives better or teach us something is an outdated mindset. Rather, she recommends that art ought to be valued for its own sake, without needing to be evaluated by its usefulness or academic value. Anderson is recommending that art ought to be valued for its beauty, its imagination, and its capability to evoke emotion, rather than for its ability to teach us something or make our lives better. She is encouraging us to value art for its own sake, rather than searching for a moral or lesson in it.