33 Quotes by David Denby

If you don’t read books, and if you don’t get consumed by the physical and moral life of men and women in fiction and history, too many facets of yourself may never come into being.

Snark often functions as an enforcer of mediocrity and conformity. In its cozy knowingness, snark flatters you by assuming that you get the contemptuous joke. You’ve been admitted, or readmitted, to a club, though it may be the club of the second-rate.

The trouble with today’s snarky pipsqueaks who break off a sentence or two, or who write a couple of mean paragraphs, is that they don’t go far enough; they don’t have a coherent view of life. Spinning around in the media from moment to moment, they don’t stand for anything, push for anything; they’re mere opportunists without dedication, and they don’t win any victories.

But after children leave their parents’ arms, school is still the necessary place for knowledge and soul to spring into life and good teachers are still the instigators of that miracle.

A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.

I was shocked. A dying word, “shocked.” Few people have been able to use it well since Claude Rains so famously said, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here,” as he pocketed his winnings in Casablanca. But it’s the only word for excitement and alarm of this intensity.