James Wolcott Quotes

Quotes about:

• Wisdom is for statues. Humor uncaps our inhibitions, unleashes our energies, seals friendships, patches hurts. Laughing is probably the most alive you can be.

  James Wolcott

  Hurt, Laughing, Energy

  47 Copy quote

• Everyone is entitled to his own nostalgia.

  James Wolcott

  Nostalgia, Entitled

  6 Copy quote

• As music migrates into our iPods, CD collections require less and less room, residing in our heads rather than resounding off the walls. The protracted labor of amassing a personal music library has lost its detective zeal.

  James Wolcott

  Wall, Ipods, Cds

  25 Copy quote

• Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized.

  James Wolcott

  Art, Book, Design

  16 Copy quote

• The lies the government and media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves. To stop being conned, stop conning yourself.

  James Wolcott

  Peace, Lying, War

  85 Copy quote

• I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong--Mother Nature's fist of fury, Gaia's stern rebuke. Considering the havoc mankind has wreaked upon nature with deforesting, stripmining, and the destruction of animal habitat, it only seems fair that nature get some of its own back and teach us that there are forces greater than our own.

  James Wolcott

  Mother, Strong, Stupid

  8 Copy quote

• With 'Black Swan,' the ballerina saga flips its tiara and goes on a hallucinatory bender, a scary acid trip where transfiguration and disfiguration meet.

  James Wolcott

  Swans, Scary, Black

  8 Copy quote

• I think ambition is a desire for recognition. People want to be special. I think ambition can take in a whole package of things, power or sexual excitement.

  James Wolcott

  Ambition, Thinking, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  4 Copy quote

• Even the most piddling life is of momentous consequence to its owner.

  James Wolcott

  Peace, War, Life Is

  7 Copy quote

• It isn't that NPR is matriarchal but that it has dedicated itself to not being patriarchal in its outlook and presentation, stipulating from the outset that its headline voices would not resound across the fruited plains from big male bags of air sent from Mount Olympus.

  James Wolcott

  Voice, Npr, Air

  7 Copy quote

• Used to be, conservatives revered the Average American, that Norman Rockwell oil painting of diner food, humble faith, honest toil, and Capraesque virtue.

  James Wolcott

  Humble, Oil Painting, Average

  6 Copy quote

• In the first weeks of the Obama administration, 'bipartisanship' was the reigning buzzword, and when the Beltway thinks 'bipartisan,' it pictures President Reagan and Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill putting aside their differences and forging a legislative partnership, a ruddy pair of genial patriarchs bonding over the Blarney Stone.

  James Wolcott

  Thinking, Differences, House

  4 Copy quote

• People want to be special. I think ambition can take in a whole package of things, power or sexual excitement.

  James Wolcott

  Ambition, Thinking, People

  "James Wolcott’s Old New York". Interview with Royal Young, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 25, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

• Broadway purists may deplore the influx of movie-spinoff musicals in recent years, wishing someone would turn off the popcorn machine and let more imaginative brainstorms blow through.

  James Wolcott

  Blow, Years, Wish

  4 Copy quote

• It's one thing to fight for what you believe in, another thing to fight for what others believe in.

  James Wolcott

  Peace, War, Believe

  James Wolcott (2013). “Critical Mass: Four Decades of Essays, Reviews, Hand Grenades, and Hurrahs”, p.390, Anchor

  7 Copy quote

• Telling writers to shut up is a sure way to keep them talking.

  James Wolcott

  Talking, Way, Shut Up

  4 Copy quote

• My high-school papers, my college-application essays, read like Norman Mailer packed in a crunchy-peanut-butter sandwich.

  James Wolcott

  School, College, Paper

  4 Copy quote

• Today a celebrity sex video isn't a stigma that requires penance and smarm removal; it's a branding device, a platform enhancer, a show reel.

  James Wolcott

  Sex, Today, Penance

  4 Copy quote

• A new political-entertainment class has moved into the noisy void once occupied by the sage pontiffs of yore, a class just as polarized as our partisan divide: one side holding up a fun-house mirror to folly, the other side reveling in its own warped reflection.

  James Wolcott

  Fun, Reflection, Class

  4 Copy quote

• Who elected Larry King America's grief counselor? We, the viewing public, did, by driving up his ratings whenever somebody famous passes.

  James Wolcott

  Kings, Grief, America

  4 Copy quote

• At 'The Village Voice,' there were all these fevers inside the offices, that would break out into full-scale rumbles between writers.

  James Wolcott

  Voice, Office, Break Out

  "James Wolcott’s Old New York". Interview with Royal Young, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 25, 2011.

  11 Copy quote

• What had brought me to New York in the autumn of 1972 was a letter of recommendation written by Norman Mailer, the author of 'The Naked and the Dead' and American literature's leading heavyweight contender, to Dan Wolf, the delphic editor of 'The Village Voice.'

  James Wolcott

  New York, Autumn, Editors

  4 Copy quote

• What's happening to movie critics is no different from what has been meted out to book, dance, theater, and fine-arts reviewers and reporters in the cultural deforestation that has driven refugees into the diffuse clatter of the Internet and Twitter, where some adapt and thrive - such as Roger Ebert - while others disappear without a twinkle.

  James Wolcott

  Inspirational, Dance, Art

  5 Copy quote

• What a turnaround in sentiment 'Glee' exemplifies. It was only a few years ago that pursuing the dream of a Broadway career or cabaret stardom relegated some poor yearning dope to a lavender ghetto of losers, self-deluders, and social rejects.

  James Wolcott

  Dream, Ghetto, Dope

  9 Copy quote

• Whenever I catch a chunk of an Adam Sandler comedy on cable, it looks as badly shot and goofily tossed off as a Jerry Lewis gag reel once he hit the late downslide with 'Hardly Working' and 'Cracking Up.'

  James Wolcott

  Looks, Comedy, Adam

  4 Copy quote

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