140 Quotes by Pauline Kael

If you’re afraid of movies that excite your senses, you’re afraid of movies.

If I never saw another fistfight or car chase or Doberman attack, I wouldn’t have any feeling of loss. And that goes for Rottweilers, too.

In a foreign country people don’t expect you to be just like them, but in Los Angeles, which is infiltrating the world, they don’t consider that you might be different because they don’t recognize any values except their own. And soon there may not be any others.

When a picture can’t make it on its own, the producers pull in a ‘controversial’ message – the way a couple whose marriage is falling apart decide to have a baby.

Television as we have it isn’t an art form – it’s a piece of furniture that is good for a few things.

McLuhanism and the media have broken the back of the book business; they’ve freed people from the shame of not reading. They’ve rationalized becoming stupid and watching television.

There is something spurious about the very term ‘a movie made for TV,’ because what you make for TV is a TV program.

What is getting older if it isn’t learning more ways that you’re vulnerable?

Being creative is having something to sell, or knowing how to sell something, or having sold something. It has taken over what we used to mean by being “wised up” knowing the tricks, the shortcuts.