“The accuser of pretension always presumes bad intentions. Truth is, more often than not pretension is simply someone trying to make the world more interesting, responding to it the way they think is appropriate. It’s more likely that what you… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
“Pretension is a question of optics. The pessimist sees pretension as a sham. The optimist views it as innocent, tragicomic, an excess of effort. Like watching amateur actors in a local village play, a wooden or overambitious performance might not… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
There's a sense of knowing when to stop and take a break from things, to step back from the work you're making, and of… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
“Try describing a few of the most wildly successful pop albums of the twentieth century without mentioning the artist and title. A concept rock… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
“Why can’t a musician try to make a cinematic “state of the nation” poem told through dream imagery and pop music? They may fail… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
“Claims to ordinariness and salt-of-the-earth virtue—“slumming it,” as it’s crudely called—are themselves pretentious. The assumption that dropping your aitches or asserting a love of… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
“The intellectually insecure drop the word “pretentious” to shut down a conversation they don’t understand, when simply saying “I don’t know” or asking “Can… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
“The accuser of pretension always presumes bad intentions. Truth is, more often than not pretension is simply someone trying to make the world more… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
“Pretentiousness shares with sophistication a lingering sense of “unnaturalness”; something faked, pretending, tampered with. Litvak presses the idea that sophistication is linked to perversion… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
“Pretension is a question of optics. The pessimist sees pretension as a sham. The optimist views it as innocent, tragicomic, an excess of effort.… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
I think that one way of diffusing an insult is to turn it around and laugh at yourself - that's a way of coping… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
The contortions and games of identity that politicians play on themselves almost everyday is kind of extraordinary. Trump, for instance, speaks like a five-year-old… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
“The pretentious flaws of others affirm your own intellectual or aesthetic expertise. Simultaneously, their fakery highlights the contours of your down-to-earth character and virtuous… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
“Not every artist can make a masterpiece, yet it’s the experiments that quietly stumble forward that lead to them. There’s an altogether more generous… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
“The fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes is brought up time and again, a conspiracy to dupe someone, a pretense designed to make the… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
In Britain, class is a neurosis. You judge people from the moment they open their mouth and start speaking: what their accent represents in… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
“Comfort with an art form that uses language comes because we all own it, to one degree or another. Words come from flesh and… — Dan Fox Copy Share Image
