110 Quotes by Terry Teachout

Theory is meaningless to a genius.

BE KIND EVERY ONE HAVE A FIGHT.

Yes, translation is by definition an inadequate substitute for being able to read a masterpiece in the original.

I wouldn't care to speculate about what it is in Westlake's psyche that makes him so good at writing about Parker, much less what it is that makes me like the Parker novels so much. Suffice it to say that Stark/Westlake is the cleanest of all noir novelists, a styleless stylist who gets to the point with stupendous economy, hustling you down the path of plot so briskly that you have to read his books a second time to appreciate the elegance and sober wit with which they are written.

Whether early or late, the Parker novels are all superlative literary entertainments.

Does film music really matter to the average moviegoer? A great score, after all, can't save a bad film, and a bad score - so it's said - can't sink a good one.

No cowboy songs, no hoedowns. It's a more serious piece. Yet every bar of 'Appalachian Spring' is clear, clean, tonal, intelligible - great music that anyone can grasp at first hearing.

This impeccably researched study of the classic black insult game may be the funniest work of serious scholarship ever published.

No translation can possibly be perfect. Every production and every performance is a different path up the mountain, and nobody ever makes it all the way to the summit.