Michelle Dean Quotes

To be popular one must be a mediocrity.

Having a set, popular formula does inhibit you.

When something works on a huge level, everybody does it.

To say that an idea is fashionable is to say, I think, that is has been adulterated to a point where it is hardly an idea at all.

There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.

For some critics we might be uncool on account of our popularity.

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.

I think in reality, today, if you use the same tools as everyone else, you kind of build the same products.

Where all think alike, none thinks very much.

I'm mainstream.

It baffles me that everything is so homogenized, because the world isn't, and yet we continue to support things that are so incredibly milquetoast.

I think if you write from your own gut, you'll come up with something interesting, whereas if you sit around guessing what people want, you end up with the kind of same schlock that everybody else has got.

I'm from Long Island, which is a very cookie-cutter place.

Being mainstream is fun.

One has to create music with mass appeal and not something which is niche. With niche music, you will only go a small distance.

I'll put it to you like this: You can only go as mainstream as people will let you go.

I don't know what I want, but I do know that I don't want the usual stuff, the cliched stuff is just too mind-numbing. They sell, I know, but it makes me sad to know that.

Pop music - deriving from the word 'popular' - for me, it's just great to be a part of music that reaches a large amount of people and not just a small amount of people.

Trends die. That's the natural thing about a trend. It's natural for people to be followers and be sheep and go with a trend.

Big films help your reach a wider audience, and doing independent films keeps your artistic side happy.

Broadway is not about surprises. It's about rewarding the putrid, formulaic crap that makes Broadway Broadway.

I guess the bottom line is I don't make music that is consumed en masse.

The Situation has mass appeal.

You can drive yourself crazy and tie yourself in knots trying to anticipate what someone's going to like or not like, and doing test screenings and opinion polls. But pay too much mind to that, and you'll wind up with a big pile of mush.

Nobody's unique. Everybody copies off of each other. Everybody wears the same type of stuff. Nobody's an individual anymore.