Famous quotes containing the words national, society, film and/or critics:
“The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner’s visit to Congress—these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage, these persons are a reflection on the democratic process rather than of it; they expose it in its process rather than of it; they expose it in its underwear.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“The product of the artist has become less important than the fact of the artist. We wish to absorb this person. We wish to devour someone who has experienced the tragic. In our society this person is much more important than anything he might create.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“A film is a petrified fountain of thought.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“Nature, when she invented, manufactured, and patented her authors, contrived to make critics out of the chips that were left.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–1894)