Cyril Connolly Quotes

Classicism is health, romanticisim is sickness.

People want to hear about the extremes of human nature. They want things that are larger than their own lives, and more romantic, and not necessarily of their own experiences.

I'm a romantic, and we romantics are more sensitive to the way people feel. We love more, and we hurt more. When we're hurt, we hurt for a long time.

Romanticism has never been properly judged. Who was there to judge it? The critics!

A lot of people have something to say about 'Wuthering Heights,' but nobody quite nails it.

With the first commandment, Mohammed tried to imprison common sense. And with the second commandment, the beautiful, romantic side of mankind was enslaved.

The Romantics were whipping boys of the New Criticism, but they appealed to me anyway. I was recalcitrant. It was clear to me that they had thought innovatively.

I just - I like the saccharin and the gooeyness of 'Bachelor,' and how just gross and like falsely romantic it is. Whereas, like, the 'Real Housewives' is just raw, and it's just - it's the fights that get me. It's just very uncomfortable for me.

There's the tradition of the 19th-century ballets, and the 20th century has had a difficult time with that tradition. And it's had a difficult time with many components of the Romantic imagination because of modernism.

To write a novel is to embark on a quest that is very romantic. People have visions, and the next step is to execute them. That's a very romantic project. Like Edvard Munch's strange dreamlike canvases where people are stylized, like 'The Scream.' Munch must have had that vision in a dream, he never saw it.

It seems disingenuous to ask a writer why she, or he, is writing about a violent subject when the world and history are filled with violence.

You gotta remember: we're musicians... we're just crazy people who can't get along sometimes. I've definitely come to the table with my knife in my pocket a couple of times; you know how it is. It's part of being human. Now add fame and money and all that rock and roll craziness to it - we're lucky we don't eat each other in this industry!

India is desperately romantic, utterly unashamed of its sentimentality, its generosity, its fierce pride and massive heart.

Like almost everything else from the West, the Romantic Revolution arrived late in Russia.

I am not a political writer. I agree with Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, who are social writers. I can't write in that fashion. I am not good enough for that. What I am interested in is family dramas and why we are doing bad things to each other and what our motives are.

'Hamlet' is so modern; 'Coriolanus' is utterly alien to our consciousness, and that makes it difficult for us.

[Hillary Clinton] and I are fine. Are we going to be besties for the rest of our lives? No.

But I was a pure romantic, and only operating with half my burners turned on.

Romanticism is the abuse of adjectives

It's probably hard to feel any sort of Romantic spiritual connection to nature when you have to make your living from it.

The latest literary discussions reflect a struggle between two artistic methods - romanticism and realism, with the latter clearly ascendant for the time being.

The etiquette of intimacy is very different from the etiquette of formality, but manners are not just something to show off to the outside world. If you offend the head waiter, you can always go to another restaurant. If you offend the person you live with, it's very cumbersome to switch to a different family.

From time immemorial, people have talked about peace without achieving it. Do we simply lack enough experience? Though we talk peace, we wage war. Sometimes we even wage war in the name of peace. . . . War may be too much a part of history to be eliminated—ever.

We are dealing with a fundamental characteristic, inherent in human nature, a potentiality given to all or most human beings at birth, which most often is lost or buried or inhibited as the person gets enculturated.

Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?