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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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Renata Adler
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: October 19
Author
Film Critic
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Milano
Italia
Brett Daniels
Like
Since
Times
Intellectuals
Everyone
Several
Lives
York
Stills
Except
Still
Lead
Much
Grew
Things
Changed

More quotes by Renata Adler

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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 follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.
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I took a little celebrational nap.
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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.
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The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives.
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My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions.
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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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The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.
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There is a difference, of course, between real sentiment and the trash of shared experience.
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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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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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A favorite strategy was the paragraph-terminating: Right? Followed immediately by Wrong. This linear invitation to a mugging was considered a strategy of wit.
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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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There are times when every act, no matter how private and unconscious, becomes political.
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Being neurotic seemed to be a kind of wild card, an all-purpose explanation.
Renata Adler
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Lyda was an exuberant, even a dramatic gardener.... She was always holding up a lettuce or a bunch of radishes with an air of resolute courage, as though she had shot them herself.
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My dislike has no consequences. It accrues only in my mind—like preserves on a shelf or guns zeroing in, and never firing.
Renata Adler
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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.
Renata Adler
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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.
Renata Adler
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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.
Renata Adler