We are still vulnerable to gender-targeted marketing no matter how carefully we edit our children's bookshelves. — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
Verisimilitude is something I am constantly seeking in fiction. I am looking for surface detail that makes something seem real. — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
Canadian writers don't live in gated mansions; you can just talk to them when you see them lining up at the Second… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
I have argued about the future of fiction with jaded novelists, far-seeing postmodernists, technologists, television critics. The argument that future generations will… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
Calls for the simplification of abstract or allusive art have always come from governments suspicious of artists themselves. This is why totalitarian… — Russell Smith Abstract Copy Share Image
My son craves picture books about Transformers and Ninja Turtles and the Hulk; they show one fantastic creature smashing or zapping another… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
Most critics of gender division are women, and they're worried about girls and the roles presented for them by gendered entertainments. They… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
The only pleasurable part of taking the subway, as everyone will agree, is concocting elaborate fantasies about what it would be like… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
I don't see my artist friends as any more neurotic or addiction-prone than the others. The roommates I have had who were… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
My father was a graduate student at Oxford in the early 1960s, where the conventions and etiquette of clothing were crucial to… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
No matter how fine your suit and your shoes, you will remind everyone that you are not yet a grownup man by… — Russell Smith College Copy Share Image
Anyone who has set out to invent a purely imaginary story knows that the whole thing is fantasy, from beginning to end;… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
All coffee shops now have WiFi. Why bring a book when you could be wittily attacking some idiot columnist on Twitter, or… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
The YA category is an entirely new one, and seems to have more to do with readability than with age group or… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
I dislike turtlenecks at the best of times, as they are always unflattering to the imperfect male physique, but when worn in… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
Songs are great. I love songs. I sing them in the shower sometimes. They can be poignant or cheery or angry, and… — Russell Smith Angry Copy Share Image
Guys think that the military associations of camo are going to make them look tough, as if they might just break out… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
If you tell your husband or boyfriend for his whole life that he needn't worry about his clothes, that he couldn't possibly… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
Here is a fundamental conflict in educated society: We are not supposed to value beauty so highly, and yet who can defend… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
Indeed, the whole point of the man bun, I have surmised, is to assert a high proficiency at yoga. There are no… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
I went to Queen's - a fine university with the proudly stupidest frosh week in the country. This was, when I was… — Russell Smith Class Copy Share Image
Possibly the strangest book ever made, the 'Codex Seraphinianus' is an encyclopedia of an imaginary world, with illegible calligraphy - it is… — Russell Smith Alphabet Copy Share Image
Conformism is essential to the group coherence and 'spirit.' The whole impetus behind tribalism of this kind is conservative: Belonging to the… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
In the best stories, people are morally complex; they are flawed. We read them because the world is flawed, and we want… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
Have you noticed the people most likely to be up in arms about governments apparently spying on us tend to be the… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
I was given a thick paperback copy of the 'Guinness Book of Records' when I was 11 years old, and I read… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
What I would love to see is art that explicitly addresses not personal intimacies but anonymous intimacies: the vast collections of facts… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
Men over 60 often think that if they wear athletic shoes - soft-soled referee shoes or hiking shoes or actual running shoes… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
I'm in favour of hipster androgyny: Any trend that permits men to rebel against strict gender rules of appearance is going to… — Russell Smith Copy Share Image
