Hermann Broch Quotes

Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing.

Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you'll find the real tinsel underneath.

Pop art is the inedible raised to the unspeakable.

The techniques of kitsch, which are based on imitation, are rational and operate according to formulas; the remain rational even when their result has a highly irrational, even crazy, quality.

Vulgarity is, in reality, nothing but a modern, chic, pert descendant of the goddess Dullness.

Reality is as thin as paper and betrays with all its cracks its imitative character.

Kitsch tends to wallow in beauty - its shortcoming is not aesthetic, but ethical

There is a frantic race to merchandise tinsel and trash under the guise of 'modernism.'

There is a sort of mystery to kitsch. When did it begin? If it is just simply another name for faking emotions, it ought to have been a permanent part of the human condition.

Banality is a symptom of non-communication. Men hide behind their cliches.

Some people just see the glory and they don't want to know about the story.

Every creation is, at its root, the struggle between potential form and imitated form.

I looked for great men, but all I found were the apes of their ideals.

Style is something you can use, and you can be like a magpie, just taking what you want.

As for being sociable, I hate the phoniness in the showbiz world. I know this will be taken wrong, but I don't like clubs and organizations. I was never a joiner.

On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

Don't impersonate. Innovate.

What we're trying to do as writers is rescue, preserve this space of thoughtfulness of language, of a deeper and more honest appreciation of our reality. And, so, we have to work even harder as writers against this tide of silliness, against this tide of superficiality, against this horrible Greek chorus on Twitter where everyone is insulting each other and now we have an insulter-in-chief, who's risen to the presidency by insulting people.

But nowadays everybody's a comedian, even the weather girls and continuity announcers. We laugh at everything. Not intelligently anymore, not with sudden shock, astonishment, or revelation, just relentlessly and meaninglessly. No more rain showers in the desert, just mud and drizzle everywhere, occasionally illuminated by the flash of paparazzi.

Always scorn appearances and you always may.

Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means.

Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.

The Russian dramatist is one who, walking through a cemetery, does not see the flowers on the graves. The American dramatist . . . Does not see the graves under the flowers.

Virtual reality is just air guitar writ large.

Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize.