Adam Hochschild Quotes

In the modern world, all literary art is necessarily political -- especially that which pretends not to be.

Most of the really good literature I've read in my life was political, meaning it was important - about something going on in the history of the world - or contemporary.

Think of anybody - Dostoevsky or Jane Austen - [their work] was always something that now we would call political. So I don't see those separations too much, between what is artistic and what is political. Maybe in painting... no, I don't even believe that.

We wanted to describe society from our Left point of view. Per had written political books, but they'd only sold 300 copies. We realised that people read crime and through the stories we could show the reader that under the official image of welfare-state Sweden there was another layer of poverty, criminality and brutality.

We live in a world of crisis, of challenge, and... it's in our galleries that we can unpack the civilizations that we're seeing the current manifestations of.

Why are we reading a Shakespeare play or 'Huckleberry Finn?' Well, because these works are great, but they also tell us something about the times in which they were created. Unfortunately, previous eras and dead authors often used language or accepted as normal sentiments that we now find unacceptable.

When you look at 'Grapes of Wrath,' the weakest moments are those in which Steinbeck is spouting a political idea directly at the reader. The book's real power comes from its slower, broader movement.

Literature is a far more ancient and viable thing than any social formation or state. And just as the state interferes in literature, literature has the right to interfere in the affairs of state.

It is clear from Salman Rushdie's writing that politics and literature cannot be separated. Everything is political.

Faulkner speaks to us on the questions of race, the challenges of modernity, and modern man's dilemma in all of its aspects. That he is able to specify among those and bring those themes alive is one of his great gifts. There are so many different kinds of pleasures one gets from encountering those materials.

Politics has always been in my music. Anybody who doesn't understand how political "Copperhead Road" is isn't listening very well.

I use really crazy subject matter, like all of those pictures of me throwing up and cutting myself, it's to make people think rather than be so mediocre. Instead of just seeing another girl with implants, I want to have meaning to what I do.

Punk is an attitude, not a genre, age group, or time period. What's interesting is trying to define the blues and punk in different ways. They are very close cousins.

If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil.

There's the fact that American fiction is basically the most apolitical fiction on the globe. A South American writer wouldn't dare think of writing a novel if it didn't allude to the system into which these people are orchestrated - or an Eastern European writer, or a Russian writer, or a Chinese writer. Only American writers are able to imagine that the government and the corporations - all of it - seem to have no effect whatsoever.

All great art comes from a sense of outrage.

I was interested in [Hunter S. Thompson novels]. The rebel in me fell in love with it, and the artist in me was confused by it, and interested and turned on. Ever since, his work has meant different things to me, at different times, and I still get new meaning out of it and appreciate it, in a different way. His work is very visceral, and you can take from it what you want, in various moments of your life.

I already feel that I am making a political statement by sticking around in music, when I am doing it so differently to everyone else.

I also do political cartoons, but a lot of them must stay, as they say, under the coat. But they are very fun to do, and in France, we have a good subject at the moment.

I feel the popular music of a certain time really tells you a lot about what life was like in that period.

I want my pictures to cut through political abstractions... and make a connection on a human level.

there are people who read my work and accuse me of being political! As far as I'm concerned that's like accusing a dog of having a bark!

Right now, we live in bad times in this country, and the fact that there are filmmakers addressing political and social issues is to me a good thing.

I have always had a deep belief that every movie, every artistic expression, is political. Don't be fooled. Even ones that we wouldn't consider overtly political are political. When we spend time doing anything, whether it's distraction or whether it's something that we have to face, it is always political. That's my belief.

All music has political dimensions because it suggests a way of being.