“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellectual upon art. ”
― Susan Sontag

“Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?”
― Connie Willis, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories

“The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.”
― Jean De La Bruyere

“The "norm" for humanity is love.
Brutality is an aberration.
We are not sinners by nature.
We learn to be bad.
We are taught to stray from our good paths.
We are made to be crazy by other people who are also crazy and who draw for us a map of the world which is ugly, negative, fearful, and crazy.”
― Jack D. Forbes, Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wetiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism

“Writers are often the worst judges of what they have written.”
― Stephen King, Everything's Eventual

“I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... 'I spoke to three scholars,' [the character says 'at last.'] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote]' ...I can see that he's excited. [narrator]' ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a 'literary' writer based on this quote. A 'literary' author knows that a character's excitement should be 'shown' in his or her dialogue and not in the narrator's commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the 'I can see that he's excited' sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), 'a remote human possibility.' He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!”
― Roman Payne

“Lucie announced she planned to read to James from her work in progress, Secret Princess Lucie Is Rescued from Her Terrible Family. James listened with a carefully arranged look of interest, even though he was subjected to endless tales of Cruel Prince James and his many awful deeds.
“I think that Cruel Prince James has been somewhat boxed in by his name,” James offered at one point. Lucie informed him that she wasn’t looking for critique at this stage in the creative process.
“Secret Princess Lucie only wishes to be kind, but Cruel Prince James is driven to cruelty because he simply cannot stand to see Princess Lucie best him again and again, in every domain,” said Lucie.
“I’m going to go now,” said James.”
― Cassandra Clare, Chain of Gold

“It's rather disconcerting to sit around a table in a critique of someone else's work, only to realize that the antagonist in the story is none other than yourself, and no one present thinks you're a very likable character.”
― Michelle Richmond

“There was and still is a tremendous fear that poor and working-class Americans might one day come to understand where their political interests reside. Personally, I think the elites worry too much about that. We dumb working folk were clubbed into submission long ago, and now require only proper medication for our high levels of cholesterol, enough alcohol to keep the sludge moving through our arteries, and a 24/7 mind-numbing spectacle of titties, tabloid TV, and terrorist dramas. Throw in a couple of new flavours of XXL edible thongs, and you've got a nation of drowsing hippos who will never notice that our country has been looted, or even that we have become homeless ourselves.”
― Joe Bageant, Rainbow Pie

“La réalité du temps a été remplacée par la publicité du temps.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

“Le tourisme, se ramène fondamentalement au loisir d'aller voir ce qui est devenu banal.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

“He was a young man of savage & unexpected originality, a diseased genius & quite frankly, a mad genius. Imbeciles grow insane & in their insanity the imbecility remains stagnant or agitated; in the madness of a man of genius some genius often remains: the form & not the quality of intelligence has been affected; the fruit has been bruised in the fall, but has preserved all its perfume & all the savor of its pulp, hardly too ripe.”
― Remy de Gourmont, The Book of Masks

“Spinoza or Nietzsche are philosophers whose critical and destructive powers are without equal, but this power always springs from affirmation, from joy, from a cult of affirmation and joy, from the exigency of life against those who would mutilate and mortify life. For me, that is philosophy itself.”
― Gilles Deleuze

“Não sabíamos que a ordem nas ruas, nas estradas, nas pontes e nas esquadras tinha de ser comprada por tão alto preço - o da venda a retalho da alma portuguesa.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“By redirecting the focus of our lives from families and communities to institutions and networks, we, in effect, anoint a machine our king.”
― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

“Wir mögen uns vielleicht für Retter und Unheilverhinderer halten, tatsächlich aber schauen wir den Dingen seelenruhig beim Entgleisen zu.”
― Miriam Böttger, Aus dem Haus: Roman

“Eigentlich ist jede Familie eine Sekte für sich, mit irgendeiner speziellen Idee oder Wahnvorstellung, um die alles kreist, oft naheliegende Dinge wie Status, Macht, Tradition, Prominenz, Vermögen, Schönheit, Talente der Kinder.”
― Miriam Böttger, Aus dem Haus: Roman

“Les force qu'elle a déchaînées suppriment la nécessité economique qui a été la base immuable des sociétés anciennes. Quand elle la remplace par la nécessité du développement economique infini, elle ne peut que remplacer la satisfatction des premiers besoins humains sommairement reconnus, par une fabrication ininterrompue de pseudo-besoins qui se ramènent au seul pseudo-besoin du maintien de son règne.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

“Les pseudo-événements qui se pressent dans la dramatisation spectaculaire n'ont pas été vécus par ceux qui en sont informés ; et de plus ils se perdent dans l'inflation de leur remplacement précipité, à chaque pulsion de la machinerie spectaulaire. D'autre part, ce qui a été réellement vécu est sans relation avec le temps irréversible officiel de la société, et en opposition directe au rythme pseudo-cyclique du sous-produit consommable de ce temps. Ce vécu individuel de la vie quotidienne séparée reste sans langage, sans concept, sans accès critique à son propre passé qui n'est consigné nulle part. Il ne se communique pas. Il est incompris et oublié au profit de la fausse mémoire spectaculaire du non-mémorable.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

“We may well have numerous failed states in the Muslim world, I’ll give you that. But what we don’t have are failed societies. That’s a phenomenon that we only see in the West. Our societies are functioning, even if our governments are not, even if we don’t have state-imposed order. We still have functioning societies, we still have moral societies. Our people are still following a moral code. Can’t say the same about the West. And it’s interesting to me that the West uses this as an insult to the Muslim world, ‘‘Oh, look you have failed states’’. First of all, in most instances, you collapsed our states. And second of all, we can still function without them. Can you?”
― Shahid Bolsen

“Networks like schools are not communities, just as school training is not education.”
― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

“The logic of the school-mind is that it is better to leave school with a tool kit of superficial jargon derived from economics, sociology, natural science, and so on than with one genuine enthusiasm. But quality in education entails learning about something in depth.”
― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

“A combination of television and the stresses peculiar to two-income or single-parent families has swallowed up most of what used to be family time as well. Our kids have no time left to grow up fully human and only thin-soil wastelands to do it in.”
― John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit—all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
― Anthony Oliveira

“Reality TV... The curse of the twenty-first century. Why were people so fascinated by being spectators to other people's lives? Watching people bake cakes, build tree houses, or just invading rich families' living rooms. It was like watching a soap opera without the plot.”
― Adam Rabinowitz, Garage Band

“Learn to bear; critique is neither terror nor crime; it is a right of everyone.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“How can a people be individually intelligent, progressive, and enterprising, but collectively hidebound, stupid, and incapable to change its destiny as perennial victims?

This contradiction may be said to be the central concern of all Armenian dissidents from Movses Khorenatsi in the 5th century AD to Gostan Zarian in our own days.”
― Ara Baliozian, Definitions: A critical companion to Armenian history and culture

“I know not why, but all the noblest arts hold in perfection but for a very little moment. They soon reach a height from which they begin to decline, and when they have begun to decline it is a pity that they cannot be knocked on the head; for an art is like a living organism - better dead than dying. There is no way of making an aged art young again; it must be born anew and grow up from infancy as a new thing, working out its own salvation from effort to effort in all fear and trembling.”
― Samuel Butler, Erewhon, or Over The Range

“When one is fully accountable, he suffers and bears this suffering towards another individual, who is likely entertained and gains power.”
― Connor Patrick Sullivan, Philosophy of The Individual

“After a while, the creator of the cross sees the one upon it not as an entertainer, but instead as scary to him. At this point, he instills upon him the numbing sickness.”
― Connor Patrick Sullivan, Philosophy of The Individual