Pauline Kael Quotes

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

The first prerogative of an artist in any medium is to make a fool of himself.

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

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

Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.

Kevin Costner has feathers in his hair and feathers in his head. The Indians should have called him 'Plays with Camera.'

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.

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

I see little of more importance to the future of our country and of civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him.

Trash has given us an appetite for 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.

A book might be written on the injustice of the just.

A mistake in judgment isn't fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is.

Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open.