Gilbert Adair Quotes & Sayings

In New York
whose subway trains in particular have been 'tattooed' with an energy to put our own rude practitioners to shame
not an inch of free space is spared except that of advertisements . Even the most chronically dispossessed appear prepared to endorse the legitimacy of the 'haves. — Gilbert Adair

And my Black bird, still not quitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On that pallid bust -- still flitting through my dolorous domain;
But it cannot stop from gazing for it truly finds amazing
That, by artful paraphrasing, I such rhyming can sustain--
Notwithstanding my lost symbol I such rhyming still sustain--
Though I shan't try it again! — Gilbert Adair

Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism's high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past. — Gilbert Adair

My little Matthew, Isabelle at once snapped back at him, when two people agree, it means one of them is redundant — Gilbert Adair

The only tastes worth having are acquired tastes. — Gilbert Adair

All isms end in fascism. — Gilbert Adair

Love is blind but not deaf. — Gilbert Adair

The earth is mankind's ultimate haven, our blessed terra firma. When it trembles and gives way beneath our feet, it's as though one of God's checks has bounced. — Gilbert Adair

There is fire and fire: The fire that burns and the fire that gives warmth, a fire that sets a forest ablaze and the fire that puts a cat to sleep. So is it with self-love. The member that once seemed one of the wonders of the world soon becomes as homely as an old slipper. Mathew and himself gradually ceased to excite each other. — Gilbert Adair

He was also terrified that he hadn't properly read the small print of their relationship. He forgot that true friendship is a contract in which there can be no small print. — Gilbert Adair

We "need" cancer because, by the very fact of its incurability, it makes all other diseases, however virulent, not cancer. — Gilbert Adair