140 Quotes by Pauline Kael

The problem with a popular art form is that those who want something more are in a hopeless minority compared with the millions who are always seeing it for the first time, or for the reassurance and gratification of seeing the conventions fulfilled again.

An artist must either give up art or develop.

Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.

...When the bespangled Miss Charisse wraps her phenomenal legs around [Fred] Astaire, she can be forgiven everything—even the fact that she reads her lines as if she learned them phonetically.

Really, it's not people who don't understand us who drive us nuts—it's when those who shouldn't, do.

The worst thing about movie-making is that it's like life: nobody can go back to correct the mistakes.

A country which accepts wars as contests between good and evil is suffering from the delusion that the morality play symbolizes real political conflicts.

The first prerogative of any artist, in any medium, is to make a fool of himself.

Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open.