Greil Marcus Quotes (12 Quotes)


    No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.

    It works on its own terms. It puts you on the spot. It asks of you the fear and courage that it asks of its subject.

    He sounds like he's been doing it for years. In his head he probably has.

    And if he believed he was wrong, he'd say so He doubled back on himself again and again, ... Psychotic Reactions.

    It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.


    We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail.

    It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits.

    Rock 'n Roll is a combination of good ideas dried up by fads, terrible junk, hideous failings in taste and judgment, gullibility and manipulation, moments of unbelievable clarity and invention, pleasure, fun, vulgarity, excess, novelty and utter enervation.

    I'm not even close to being sick of 'Like a Rolling Stone,' ... Every time I hear it, it's like the first time. I find that's even more true now than before. Now I don't just smile. I'm astonished.

    We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours -- it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it.

    Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.

    Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.


    More Greil Marcus Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Custom & Convention - Value - Smiling - Money & Wealth - Judgment - Success - Pleasure - Life - Discovery & Invention - America - Time - Sense & Perception - Love - Fear - Betrayal - View All Greil Marcus Quotations

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