Russell Smith Quotes

39 quotes in 604 categories

• Calls for the simplification of abstract or allusive art have always come from governments suspicious of artists themselves. This is why totalitarian regimes have always…
• I would rather be nuts than unattractive.
• There is something insouciant and boyish about the sockless ankle in summer.
• What makes a publisher decide to market a book to a particular audience is not the subject matter but the style.
• The only thing that makes a book YA is that it is about teenagers, and it is written in a very conventional, non-artsy, non-pretentious way.…
• The YA category is an entirely new one, and seems to have more to do with readability than with age group or theme. The adult…
• Increasingly, to dismiss any popular artistic style is seen as the worst kind of snobbery. And snobbery, it goes without saying, is unacceptable in a…
• Indeed, the whole point of the man bun, I have surmised, is to assert a high proficiency at yoga. There are no yoga-achievement badges, no…
• I have argued about the future of fiction with jaded novelists, far-seeing postmodernists, technologists, television critics. The argument that future generations will not know the…
• Here is a fundamental conflict in educated society: We are not supposed to value beauty so highly, and yet who can defend against its sheer…
• Fashion has always been in conflict with convention. Style involves some knowledge of both. But you can pretty much forget these seasonal injunctions.
• My son craves picture books about Transformers and Ninja Turtles and the Hulk; they show one fantastic creature smashing or zapping another into smithereens on…
• I am so sick of being exhorted, as a writer, to improve the world by representing it in a more hopeful way.
• No surprise here: Pop music is by far the most conservative art form there is.
• A song is a short composition for voice and instruments. It is a piece of sung poetry set to music. It is usually only a…
• Only a tiny portion of music history involves a singer and a lyric. Songs in music are generally thought to be a minor form.
• No matter how fine your suit and your shoes, you will remind everyone that you are not yet a grownup man by wearing them with…
• Ah, the intractable Canadian problem: Winter and finery are basically incompatible.
• The only pleasurable part of taking the subway, as everyone will agree, is concocting elaborate fantasies about what it would be like to be married…
• All coffee shops now have WiFi. Why bring a book when you could be wittily attacking some idiot columnist on Twitter, or responding to your…

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