Charles Bukowski Quotes

No matter how much people want to pretend that they're embarrassed by it, that they don't watch it, everybody knows about it. It's truly, I believe, one of the only art forms that America has actually given to the world, besides jazz and comic books.

That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse.

Look at the way sports, music and film have become driving forces of popular culture. Fashion is the fourth pillar.

America's cultural table is set by the people living in the three bubbles - New York Washington D.C. and Hollywood.

Popular culture is inescapable in the U.S. Why not use it?

The movies are an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming cultured people.

I find America falling in love with a TV show flattering and interesting, but at the same time a little sad.

I humbly apologise for reality Television.

I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art.

People constantly make pop-culture references. That's why it's called popular culture, because people are aware of it and reference it constantly.

Television wasn't prestigious.

Movies are the biggest export in the world, the biggest American export. It influences people all over the world.

The entertainment industry is vast and is a reflection of the society we live in.

You were doing a TV show - you don't realise that you're also making social commentary at the same time.

I wouldn't be surprised if some day, they put the Simpsons in the Smithsonian. It's become part of our culture, those characters.

By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.

Film, therefore, is part of society, not distant from it, easy to experience for people regardless of class.

Hollywood likes to boast that it can elevate the national conscience.

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

The entertainment medium of film is particularly tuned to the present imaginations of people at large. A lot of fiction is intensely nostalgic.

It's hard to decide if TV makes morons out of everyone, or if it mirrors Americans who really are morons to begin with.

Movies are movies, and I don't think any of them are going to hurt the moral fiber of America and all that nonsense.

I love California. It has such a strong contribution to the history of culture, and popular culture. For better and worse, of course. Even the worst can be interesting to some degree sometimes for somebody creative.

But, you see, the theatre is not always art in America.

The whole Disney thing is really interesting, in a way, how that's so permeated life and the world and the planet.