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Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

Renata Adler

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Renata Adler
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: October 19
Author
Film Critic
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Milano
Italia
Brett Daniels
Great
Boredom
Time
Cruelty
People
Accidents
Preoccupations
Bored
Preoccupation
Blessing
Idleness
Unless
Idle
Sleep
Accident
Often
Cruel

More quotes by Renata Adler

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Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up, and, like everyone in New York except the intellectuals, I have led several lives and I still lead some of them.
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I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort.
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Do you realize how angry you sound?” must be one of the most infuriating questions in the language.
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I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort.
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I took a little celebrational nap.
Renata Adler
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No one ever confides a secret to one person only. No one destroys all copies of a document.
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Writing about writing is a bit like talking about a conversation you are having it tends to obscure desperation about where the next word is coming from.
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The writer has a grudge against society, which he documents with accounts of unsatisfying sex, unrealized ambition, unmitigated loneliness, and a sense of local and global distress.
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the time for prizes and competitions at art festivals is over. Competition is too closely tied to values that are alien to the arts.
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That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.
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There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.
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The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.
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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 invective.
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There is a difference, of course, between real sentiment and the trash of shared experience.
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There are times when every act, no matter how private and unconscious, becomes political.
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The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives.
Renata Adler
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The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives.
Renata Adler
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Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up, and, like everyone in New York except the intellectuals, I have led several lives and I still lead some of them.
Renata Adler
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Did I throw the most important thing perhaps, by accident, away?
Renata Adler
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My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions.
Renata Adler