Aldo said he was bored to tearsies by my grandmother's…

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

There are so many different types of writers. It's just sheer coincidence that they're all called writers.

— Renata Adler

“I think that when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade…

— Renata Adler

“The dishes that were meant to be hot were never quite as warm as those that were meant to be chilled.”

— Renata Adler

There are times when every act, no matter how private and unconscious, becomes political

— Renata Adler

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…

— Renata Adler

“he writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated lo neliness, and a sense of…

— Renata Adler

Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up, and, like everyone in New York except the intellectuals, I have led several…

— Renata Adler

“Every love story,every commercial trade, every secret, every matter in which trust is involved, is a gentle transaction of hostages. Everything is, to a…

— Renata Adler

My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions.

— Renata Adler

Fear . . . is forward. No one is afraid of yesterday.

— Renata Adler

“I've had our paper's gossip column since last month. It is egalitarian. I look for people who are quite obscure, and report who is…

— Renata Adler

It is always self-defeating to pretend to a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history.

— Renata Adler

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…

— Renata Adler

I think maybe writers come from different planets. I mean, not in any sense as extravagant as Baryshnikov. But there are some writers who…

— Renata Adler