Do you realize how angry you sound?” must be one of the most infuriating questions in the language. Renata Adler More Quotes by Renata Adler More Quotes From Renata Adler The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress. The square, overpopulation, the bourgeois, the bomb and the cocktail party are variously identified as sources of the grudge. There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born. Renata Adler loneliness philosophy sex Nothing defines the quality of life in a community more clearly than people who regard themselves, or whom the consensus chooses to regard, as mentally unwell. Renata Adler quality community people Hardly anyone about whom I deeply care at all resembles anyone else I have ever met, or heard of, or read about in literature. Renata Adler mets care literature Though films become more daring sexually, they are probably less sexy than they ever were. There haven't been any convincing love scenes or romances in the movies in a while. (Nobody even seems to neck in theaters any more.) ... when the mechanics and sadism quotients go up, the movie love interest goes dead, and the film just lies there, giving a certain amount of offense. Renata Adler movie sexy lying Most movies are not very good. Most people know it and like to see them anyway. Renata Adler very-good movie people The motion picture is like journalism in that, more than any of the other arts, it confers celebrity. Not just on people - on acts, and objects, and places, and ways of life. The camera brings a kind of stardom to them all. I therefore doubt that film can ever argue effectively against its own material: that a genuine antiwar film, say, can be made on the basis of even the ugliest battle scenes ... No matter what filmmakers intend, film always argues yes. Renata Adler movie people art In almost every thriller, a point is reached when someone, usually calling from a phone booth, telephones with a vital piece of information, which he cannot divulge by phone. By the time the hero arrives at the place where they had arranged to meet, the caller is dead, or too near death to tell. There is never an explanation for the reluctance of the caller to impart his message in the first place. Renata Adler phones hero calling Intelligent people, caught at anything, denied it. Faced with evidence of having denied it falsely, people said they had not done it and had not lied about it, and didn't remember it, but if they had done it, or lied about it, they would have done it and misspoken themselves about it in an interest so much higher as to alter the nature of doing and lying altogether. Renata Adler intelligent lying people Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having; it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from. Renata Adler next writing talking There are so many different types of writers. It's just sheer coincidence that they're all called writers. Renata Adler type different coincidence I think maybe writers come from different planets. I mean, not in any sense as extravagant as Baryshnikov. But there are some writers who understand each other this way and others who understand each other that way. Then there's this great herd, the "herd of independent minds." Renata Adler independent mean thinking Nice criticism is good when it tells you something. A lot of negative "criticism" isn't criticism at all: it's just nasty, "writerly" cliché and invective. Renata Adler nice criticism negative There is a difference, of course, between real sentiment and the trash of shared experience. Renata Adler differences real feelings My grandmother refused to concede that any member of the family died of natural causes. An uncle's cancer in middle age occurred because all the suitcases fell off the luggage rack onto him when he was in his teens, and so forth. Death was an acquired characteristic. Renata Adler cancer grandmother uncles A favorite strategy was the paragraph-terminating: Right? Followed immediately by Wrong. This linear invitation to a mugging was considered a strategy of wit. Renata Adler linear strategy conversation Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up, and, like everyone in New York except the intellectuals, I have led several lives and I still lead some of them. Renata Adler changed grew-up new-york Did I throw the most important thing perhaps, by accident, away? Renata Adler accidents important-things important In the strange heat all litigation brings to bear on things, the very process of litigation fosters the most profound misunderstandings in the world. Renata Adler bears profound world Moral self-infatuation has its own corruptions, after all. With time, almost every other principle of the magazine acquired an ironic echo, a sort of cackling aftermath. Renata Adler echoes self time There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born. Renata Adler cocktail-parties littles philosophy
