Pauline Kael Quotes

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

Watching old movies is like spending an evening with those people next door.

They bore us, and we wouldn't go out of our way to see them; we drop in on them because they're so close. If it took some effort to see old movies, we might try to find out which were the good ones, and if people saw only the good ones maybe they would still respect old movies. As it is, people sit and watch movies that audiences walked out on thirty years ago. Like Lot's wife, we are tempted to take another look, attracted not by evil but by something that seems much more shameful -- our own innocence.

One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down.

The words Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies. This appeal is what attracts us, and ultimately what makes us despair when we begin to understand how seldom movies are more than this.

This movie is a toupee made up to look like honest baldness.

It seems likely that many of the young who don't wait for others to call them artists, but simply announce that they are, don't have the patience to make art.

Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened. It may seem even fresher.