Kermode Quotes & Sayings

I would like to specialize in being an immortal invulnerable killing machine who craves the blood of the living. — Cassandra Clare

Some people say that I talk too fast, but I think it's just that they listen too slowly. — Mark Kermode

It is one of the great charms of books that they have to end. — Frank Kermode

Whoever is capable of knowing when they have had enough will always be satisfied. — Laozi

He likes 'Confetti,' and he doesn't like 'Star Wars.' I think that just relieves us from the burden of ever having to take Mark Kermode seriously again. — Robert Webb

O woman! woman! thou shouldest have few sins of thine own to answer for! Thou art the author of such a book of follies in a man that it would need the tears of all the angels to blot the record out. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

we were alive, together, and conscious, aware of our own mortality, but thrilled by the fact of our own ridiculous existence. — Mark Kermode

After a night spent writing poetry, one is almost happy to hear the milkman at the door. — Wallace Stevens

Free to call a spade a spade (and a cock a cock). — Christopher Bram

The books which seal off the long perspectives, which sever us from our losses, which represent the world of potency as a world of act, these are the books which, when the drug wears off, go on to the dump with the other empty bottles. Those that continue to interest us move through time to an end, an end we must sense even if we cannot know it; they live in change, until, which is never, as and is are one. — Frank Kermode

Our culture is all about shallow relationships. But that doesn't mean we should stop looking each other in the eye and having deep conversations. — Francis Chan

Much is written about the Batman because he is publicly exposed in print. Very little is known personally about his creator, because I haven't given out that many interviews. — Bob Kane

I'm a fan of Hugh Kenner, Richard Ellman, Lionel Trilling and Frank Kermode. All these people have taught me how to read - but perhaps, above all literary critics, I'm indebted to Wayne Booth (several people have suggested to me that I'm trying to reinvent "ethical criticism"). — Philip Kitcher

I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something quite different about you, from the last time we were together, what could it be ... ."
Was this my ultra-dose of Intoxicated taking effect?
"I know!" said the prince happily. "You're a national disgrace!"
"And do you know what else is interesting," I replied. "In America, Prince is a dog's name. — Paul Rudnick

The first phase of modernism, which so far as the English language goes we associate with Pound and Yeats, Wyndham Lewis and Eliot and Joyce, was clerkly enough, sceptical in many ways; and yet we can without difficulty convict most of these authors of dangerous lapses into mythical thinking. All were men of critical temper, haters of the decadence of the times and the myths of mauvaise foi. All, in different ways, venerated tradition and had programmes which were at once modern and anti-schismatic. This critical temper was admittedly made to seem consistent with a strong feeling for renovation; the mood was eschatological, but scepticism and a refined traditionalism held in check what threatened to be a bad case of literary primitivism. It was elsewhere that the myths ran riot. — Frank Kermode

And when we take ourselves too seriously, we are grim about the brothers and sisters, especially the dissenting ones, and there will be no health in us and no healing humor. — Walter Brueggemann

It's hard to compare. Different times, different players. The administration four years ago did not have 9/11. I could tell you this; this particular administration was better suited to handle that than the former. — Montel Williams

I suppose it would be better if one were aggressive, contentious and so on. But there's rarely any occasion to be savage. — Frank Kermode

It is not expected of critics that they should help us to make sense of our lives; they are bound only to attempt the lesser feat of making sense of the ways we try to make sense of our lives. — Frank Kermode

It is ourselves we encounter whenever we invent fictions. — Frank Kermode

You say you're different,
yet you're just another typical. — Various

The history of interpretation, the skills by which we keep alive in our minds the light and dark of past literature and past humanity ... is to an incalculable extent a history of error. — Frank Kermode

The secret associations, the schools, in the name of principles, and the middle classes, in the name of interests, were approaching preparatory to dashing themselves together, — Victor Hugo

The devil will put obstacles in your way to make you doubt the Word of God — Sunday Adelaja

Problems are everywhere, so are Solutions. Unfortunately, we see more of the Problems than the Solutions.-RVM — R.v.m.

You ingest the automobile in the very air of Detroit. Or at least you did in the 1940s and 1950s. — Edward Herrmann

Far from being a pack of baying butchers,critics sometimes have a perverse habit of tending to the sick and wounded on the cinematic field of battle, rushing in where angels fear to tread, even when the patient is clearly without a pulse. — Mark Kermode