Patrick Nielsen Hayden Quotes

The average English critic is a don manqué, hopelessly parochial when not exaggeratedly teutonophile, over whose desk must surely hang the motto (presumably in Gothic lettering) "Above all no enthusiasm".

The existence of good bad literature—the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simply refuses to take seriously—is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.

I admit to a bias toward high culture.

I'm not all that enthralled by show business, and I'm not that much of a highbrow.

Pop music will never be low brow.

I've always been drawn to artists who paint for the everyday person. I love the American illustrators.

No highbrow literary type would ever say 'Moby Dick' is good but it's just about a whale, or a Jane Austen would be important if she wasn't just writing about romantic relationships.

My whole thing is that I want to explore why you read books, what's the purpose of reading, and maybe that it's not that cool to hate something just because it's popular.

Whether your audience is in a sweaty basement club or nestled in a favourite armchair, good money has been paid, and attention has got to be grabbed if you are not to be heckled off the stage or find your novel discarded in favour of the latest volume of 'Fifty Shades of Whatever.'

We don't make movies for critics. I've done four movies; there's millions upon millions upon millions of people who've paid to see them. Somebody likes them. My greatest joy is to sit anonymously in a dark theater and watch it with an audience, a paying audience.

I look at 'The New York Review of Books.' It's what it has been for 35 or 40 years, which is a highly sophisticated vehicle for anti-American self-hatred.

Seven out of my nine films were hits. 80 per cent of the audience loves my films; the remaining 20 per may be right in their opinion, but that doesn't make me wrong. If I try too hard to woo them, I'd be cheating my core audience.

I suppose it's true that most great television, literature, and other forms of high art (and basic cable) benefit from a little hindsight. 'M.A.S.H.' comes to mind. So does 'The Iliad.'

We're just trying to make ourselves laugh. We realize critics are going to hate it, but it just makes fans like it more.

I never feel so utterly fraudulent as when I review a movie whose charms impress all in the world and I simply do not get it. The other variant is that I love something the world disdains. This has had severe career consequences: I am still famous - or notorious - in certain quarters where I am recalled as the man who liked 'Hudson Hawk.'

I don't think 'Cocktail' was a perfect critical success, but it touched a vein in our culture.

The so-called intellectuals don't like my films.

I admit that the eyes of the intellectually and culturally lively tend to glaze over at the mere mention of sociology, often with ample justification.

It's not really possible to open 'The Casual Vacancy' without a lot of expectations both high and low crashing around in your brain and distorting your vision. There's no point pretending they're not there.

The negative attitudes toward the genres - romance, science-fiction, westerns, suspense, etc. - are fallout from the academic world's long-standing fascination with existential philosophy and modern theories of psychology and sociology.

I know that movies are basically meant to be entertainment, but I'm not that interested in entertainment.

Everything is entertainment; criticism is now entertainment and it seems that the French directors have woken up one day and suddenly realised that they were not backed up any more.

Good films will run, and people will watch it irrespective of whether it is suspense or a comedy.

I've got lots of friends who would just think, 'Horror movies - they're crap, aren't they?' I think there's a cultural snobbery more than an institutional one.

I wish theater criticism in this country could be more of a companion piece to the experience than a warning about where not to spend your money.