Brendan Gill Quotes

#1. In the New Yorker library, I have long been shelved between Nadine Gordimer and Brendan Gill; an eerie little space nestled between high seriousness of purpose and legendary lightness of touch.

Adam Gopnik

#2. We're not going to fix government until we fix citizenship.

Jennifer Pahlka

#3. If it were better, it wouldn't be as good.

Brendan Gill

#4. The guns of the big events rumble through our pages, but the tiny firecrackers are constantly hissing and popping there as well; it appears that much of my life as a journalist has been devoted to sedulously setting off firecrackers.

Brendan Gill

#5. During the 20th century, Chechnya was written about by local poets and novelists, as well as writers from Russia and Central Asia, but very little is available in English translation.

Anthony Marra

#6. She knew what was coming next. The most beautiful sound there was - that elegant whoosh of the love of her life

Lauren Kate

#7. I believe that even 'returning-to-nature' and anti pollution activities, no matter how commendable, are not moving toward a genuine solution if they are carried out solely in reaction to the over development of the present age.

Masanobu Fukuoka

#8. It is in the nature of the New Yorker to be as topical as possible, on a level that is often small in scale and playful in intention.

Brendan Gill

#9. Spiritual opening is not a withdrawal to some imagined realm or safe cave. It is not a pulling away, but a touching of all the experience of life with wisdom and with a heart of kindness, without any separation.

Jack Kornfield

#10. To die quickly in one's eighth decade at the very top of one's powers is an enviable end, and not an occasion for mourning.

Brendan Gill

#11. By her estimation, the woman had probably been five years old during the height of the war. Listening to panicked voices in the next room. The majority of the living memories now owned by then-children.

Aimee Bender

#12. We must all face the fact that in a single lifetime we lead several simultaneous lives; our intention should be to make them reinforce one another instead of colliding.

Brendan Gill

#13. Family is what grounds you.

Angelina Jolie

#14. Avain attempt to subdue that unsubduable country.

Brendan Gill

#15. Leftists would like to pretend that any criticism of their views raises the specter of domestic repression. But in a country with a First Amendment, no suppression from government is likely, and in the citadels of the media and the academy, the far left is actually vastly overrepresented.

Andrew Sullivan

#16. Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.

Brendan Gill

#17. The ingenuities we practice in order to appear admirable to ourselves would suffice to invent the telephone twice over on a rainy summer morning.

Brendan Gill

#18. Parody is homage gone sour.

Brendan Gill

#19. But how a man like you, who looks so wise
And wears a moustache of such splendid size,
Can be so foolish as to ...

Moliere

#20. Throw enough scientific gibberish at non-scientists and they always faltered.

Nancy Kress

#21. Obscenity is a notable enhancer of life and is suppressed at grave peril to the arts.

Brendan Gill

#22. You are an ... animal? A talking animal?"
Without missing a beat, Teela said, "Of course not. She's much, much harder to train.

Michelle Sagara West

#23. I was the guy that told Bill Clinton he was going to win. I had gotten the final polling numbers. He had a comfortable lead. He was not going to lose.

Paul Begala

#24. I will try to cram these paragraphs full of facts and give them a weight and shape no greater than that of a cloud of blue butterflies.

Brendan Gill