Pauline Kael

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

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

“Trash has given us an appetite for art.”

“The words 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,' which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies.”

“I think you can be an honest critic without being a kind one.”

“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.”

“Good movies make you feel like you're dreaming.”

“Vulgarity is not as destructive to an artist as snobbery.”

“A movie is not a book. If it is a book, it is a bad movie.”

“Part of the pleasure of moviegoing is in trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”

“Movies are a voyeur's art.”

“I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.”

“Too many artists are trying to make a work of art and not trying to live a life.”

“An artist must either give up art or develop a hide.”

“When we are young, we don't have the words for our feelings, and when we are old, we have the words but not the feelings.”