22 Quotes by Richard Schickel

A great novel is concerned primarily with the interior lives of its characters as they respond to the inconvenient narratives that fate imposes on them. Movie adaptations of these monumental fictions often fail because they become mere exercises in interior decoration.

The law of unintended consequences pushes us ceaselessly through the years, permitting no pause for perspective.

The current moguls understand that true media power lies not in firing up our outrage, as Hearst did, but in befuddling it or tranquilizing it with new toys. The idea is to render us passive so that they can exercise their power to sell us a bunch of stuff we mostly don’t need and mostly don’t want.

Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a representationof contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a representation ofanything – except a show to be ignored by anyone capable of sitting uprightin a chair and chewing gum simultaneously.