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Quotes by Critic
"I also wanted to do something that I hadn't really seen in almost any black novels, which was a complex love story in which both people were extremely intelligent and talented and understood a lot of things and were still at odds getting it together."
36
"I was always hearing that I was pale and thin and small."
36
"Perhaps as good a classification as any of the main types is that of the three lusts distinguished by traditional Christianity - the lust of knowledge, the lust of sensation, and the lust of power."
36
"Limitation of armaments in itself is economically and financially important quite apart from security."
36
"Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal."
36
"If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama."
36
"A love for humanity came over me, and watered and fertilised the fields of my inner world which had been lying fallow, and this love of humanity vented itself in a vast compassion."
36
"I liked Nicole Kidman because she is so fashionable she can do less is more. It was very, very simple, but it was so chic. Some people thought she looked washed out, I didn't at all."
36
"You think intercourse is a private act; it's not, it's a social act. Men are sexually predatory in life; and women are sexually manipulative. When two individuals come together and leave their gender outside the bedroom door, then they make love."
36
"Black identities are diverse and complex."
36
"Part of the racialized sexism wants everyone to think that a 15-year old Mexican is not a girl, she's a woman. We know she's a girl. We can never emphasize this enough, because this is the fate of colored girls globally right now: the denial of their girlhood, the denial of their childhood, and the constant state of risk and danger they are living in."
36
"The immature artist imitates. Mature artists steal."
36
"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
36
"We can now have action movies with two stars where one might be African American and one might be Asian American. One of them doesn't have to be white, and the other one doesn't have to be the ethnic sidekick. We're way over that. And I think it's happening in society, too."
36
"Concurrently, when it comes to matters of the heart we are encouraged to treat partners as though they were objects we can pick up, use, and the discard and dispose of at will, with the one criteria being whether or not individualistic desires are satisfied."
36
"If you go door to door in our nation and talk to citizens about domestic violence, almost everyone will insist that they do not support male violence against women, that they believe it to be morally and ethically wrong. However, if you then explain that we cannot end male violence against women by challenging patriarchy, and that means no longer accepting the notion that men should have more rights and privileges than women because of biological difference or that men should have the power to rule over women, that is when the agreement stops. There is a gap between the values they claim to hold and their willingness to do the work of connecting thought and action, theory and practice to realize these values and thus create a more just society."
36
"Reason with most people means their own opinions."
36
"But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape."
36
"What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth."
36
"Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape."
36
"Feminism is hated because women are hated. Anti-feminism is a direct expression of misogyny; it is the political defense of women hating."
36
"To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worth while. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter."
36
"Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration."
35
"His acting remains forever fixed in a time that never dates."
35
"Jane Austen is at the end of the line that begins with Samuel Richardson, which takes wonder and magic out of the novel, treats not the past but the present."
35
"They tell you that you'll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don't tell you is that you won't miss it very much."
Mind,
35
"When we work with love we renew the spirit; that renewal is an act of self-love, it nurtures our growth. It's not what you do but how you do it."
35
"Faulkner turned out to be a great teacher. When a student asked a question ineptly, he answered the question with what the student had really wanted to know."
35
"Men are accomplices to that which leaves them indifferent."
35
"The artist writes, paints, sings or dances the burden of some idea or feeling off his mind."
35
"I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron."
35
"It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave."
35
"When people conclude that all is futile, then the absurd becomes the norm."
35
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