Louis Kronenberger Quotes

I think we are all of us a pretty milky lot, without tea-table convictions and our radicalism that keeps so consistently within the bounds of decorum . . . .I'd like to annihilate these stupid colleges of ours . . . instillers of stodginess.

The house has to serve comfort. The work of art is revolutionary; the house is conservative.

If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it.

Roy Blunt is another white guy in a suit, and I think the public wants change. There's a good old boys' network out there that's hard to penetrate... and it's not always in the best interest of the party or for conservative principles.

You must diligently cultivate relationships with … men of privilege. Both you and your supporters should work to convince them that you have always been a traditionalist. Never let them think that you are a populist.

Directors assume I'm, like, establishment.

Producers are men who will keep their heads in the noisy presence of writers and directors and not be carried away by art in any of its subversive guises. Their task is to guard against the unusual. They are the trusted loyalists of cliche.

The society of the Culture-Philistines makes life a burden to exceptional men.

Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it.

How I hate the attitude of ordinary people to life. How I loathe ordinariness! How from my soul I abhor nice simple people, with their eternal price list. It makes my blood boil.

I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls ... Oxford is very pretty, but I don't like to be dead.

The inquiry in England is not whether a man has talents and genius, but whether he is passive and polite and a virtuous ass and obedient to noblemen's opinions in art and science. If he is, he is a good man. If not, he must be starved.

Did you find any artists complaining who don't already complain all day long about everything? No. But have you ever met a dealer who thought it was okay? Well, you maybe. It's still the art world. It's meant to be extreme. It's supposed to stand for liberty or whatever but really it's an extremely conservative environment. Why does everyone wear jeans? Because it's practical. To say something is taboo-breaking is to assume you have a clear image of the quality of a dealer. But there are certain dealers who always work this way.

I came to the conclusion that most people in America would really like to be able to get a job where they think they're doing something noble and nice and good and it isn't just for the money. But the reason they hate what they call the cultural elite is that they see it as a class that's grabbed all the jobs where you can get paid to do something that isn't just for the money - if it's art, if it's charity, if it's intellectual, if it's political, whatever it might be.

Life is, if anything, the art of combination. Of discrimination. Of freely picking one's own personal pattern out of a hundred choices. Not letting it be picked for you—either by the Establishment, or by the Rebels. Conformity of Hip is no better than Conformity of Square.

Contemporary art hates you.

Conservatism, being an upper-class characteristic, is decorous; and conversely, innovation, being a lower-class phenomenon, is vulgar. ...Innovation is bad form.

Hollis thought he looked like William Burroughs, minus the bohemian substrate (or perhaps the methadone). Like someone who'd be invited quail shooting with the vice-president, though too careful to get himself shot.

We're being treated to the wisdom of some puffed up, little fart. Doing exactly what I used to do, pretensions to anarchy and art.

The establishment, both parties, think "Donald Trump may have built buildings and he may have written The Art of the Deal, but he can't do what we did. He can't even understand what we do because he's too stupid." They may not say it that way, but I guarantee you they have that attitude. These are arrogant people. They're very exclusive. It is a very elite, unique group, in their own minds, and they do tell themselves they're special and they're different and they're better.

The masses do not like those who surpass them in any regard. The average man envies and hates those who are different.

A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.

The sort of man who admires Italian art while despising Italian religion is a tourist and a cad.

Here's the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don't you hate that? I love that there's no map.

I hate dogma in any form. I hated it in the Catholic Church and Girl Scout troops of the 1950s, and I hate in in gay activism and established feminism today.