The rich were dull and they drank too much or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He rememb...ered poor Julian and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, "The very rich are different from you and me." And how someone had said to Julian, "Yes, they have more money."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One learns quite easily to identify the rich person who is making a career out of dangling the carrot; of being fawned on by insti...tutions eager for his (or, more often, her) money. It is not very productive to "cultivate" them. I associated with many, and developed great compassion for rich people who suspect that they are in demand only because they are a potential source of income to some cause or institution. Whether it's true or not, their suspicions isolate them from all save a handful of old and trusted friends, turn them sour, make it difficult for them to accept new friends at face value, and leave them with little attraction other than their money.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America has been a land of dreams. A land where the aspirations of people from countries cluttered with rich, cumbersome, aristocr...atic, ideological pasts can reach for what once seemed unattainable. Here they have tried to make dreams come true.... Yet now ... we are threatened by a new and particularly American menace. It is not the menace of class war, of ideology, of poverty, of disease, of illiteracy, or demagoguery, or of tyranny, though these now plague most of the world. It is the menace of unreality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is often said that New York is a city for only the very rich and the very poor. It is less often said that New York is also, at... least for those of us who came there from somewhere else, a city for only the very young.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. ...It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes--love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself--and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others--should we call it "joy"?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
So why do people keep on watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we love television because television brings u...s a world in which television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If there is any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by sid...e, and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the new era?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own... a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy. A year later there is a new political ring or a change in the paper's ownership, consequence: more confusion, more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, their tempering, their distillation, the reaction against them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Isn't Hollywood a dump--in the human sense of the word. A hideous town, pointed up by the insulting gardens of its rich, full of t...he human spirit at a new low of debasement.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The artefacts (sic) of a genius are distinguished by rich human content, for which he forges new images and new techniques, create...s new styles. He sees himself as a unique eruption in the desert of the banal. He feels himself mysteriously inspired or possessed. The craftsman, on the other hand, is content to use the traditional materials and techniques. The more self-possessed he is, the better craftsman he will be. What pleases him is skill of execution. He is very concerned with his contemporary success, his market value. If a certain kind of political commitment is fashionable, he may be committed; but out of fashion, not conviction. The genius, of course, is largely indifferent to contemporary success; and his commitment to his ideals, both artistic and political, is profoundly, Byronically, indifferent to their contemporary popularity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »