Pauline Kael
Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis ● More about Pauline Kael on this site: Pauline Kael biography |
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McLuhanism and the media have broken the back of the book business; they've freed people from the shame of not reading. They've rationalized becoming stupid and watching television.
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The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.
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If you can't make fun of bad movies on serious subjects what's the point?
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Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools
cannot recognize.
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I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization
than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots
of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever
it takes him.
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A mistake in judgment isn't fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is.
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It's very difficult to be married to somebody and write books. When you're
married, you can't read in bed, you can't write at all hours, you can't chase
around. I wasted a lot of years being unhappy because I couldn't do the things I
wanted to do.
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One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior
tastes of those who put him down.
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In this country we encourage "creativity" among the mediocre, but real bursting
creativity appalls us. We put it down as undisciplined, as somehow "too much."
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In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest
is advertising.
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It seems likely that many of the young who don’t wait for others to call them
artists, but simply announce that they are, don’t have the patience to make art.
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...I've been told I've influenced some people to become directors.
Unfortunately, most of them are lousy.
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Her only flair is in her nostrils.
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I believe that we respond most and best to work in any art form (and to other
experience as well) if we are pluralistic, flexible, relative in our judgments,
if we are eclectic.
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• Each quotation
page in this collection and the entire collection are © Jone Johnson Lewis
1997-2004. This is an informal collection -- if you need citations for the
original source, I don't have those available unless they're listed with the
quotes.
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