Michael J. Knowles Quotes

No highbrow literary type would ever say 'Moby Dick' is good but it's just about a whale, or a Jane Austen would be important if she wasn't just writing about romantic relationships.

It's very hard to imagine the phrase 'consumer society' used so cheerfully, and interpreted so enthusiastically, in England.

You can conclude from the glossy surfaces of 'The L Word' that L stands for latte or Lexus and stop there. Or you can notice that in some of its less flashy moments, the show has staked a claim on Large - as in a larger, denser, more ambivalent imaginary world, populated by imperfect and riveting citizens of all sexual stripes.

I have made sense of my life by developing an ability to analyze Mainstream American Cultural Artifacts.

I am one of the writers who wish to create serious works of literature which dissociate themselves from those novels which are mere reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at large.

Music is always a commentary on society.

These are the fifties, you know. The disgusting, posturing fifties.

I think there's a huge lack of political artists in America, and I think it really speaks to our consumeristic culture and how people are driven to be financially successful here. It's such a shame that we don't have people who are more inspired than that.

Why, on my mother's birthday, am I thinking about 'Father Knows Best?' At our house, mother knew best at least as often as father did, but then the title of the old sitcom, a homogenized portrait of American family life, was meant to be slightly sardonic.

The final purpose of art is to intensify, even, if necessary, to exacerbate, the moral consciousness of people.

The German ueber-photographer Andreas Gursky was the perfect pre-9/11 artist.

Consumerism is at once the engine of America and simultaneously one of the most revealing indicators of our collective shallowness.

There's a lot of rednecks in the country where I grew up.

My work generally tends to be an all-out, 360-degree subversive take on everything, most of all my own notion of myself as a son, father, husband, human being and male in this culture.

To Southerners like my mother, 'Gone With the Wind' was not just a book; it was an answer, a clenched fist raised to the North, an anthem of defiance.

When I read 'Dream of Red Mansions,' I was really struck by the fact that it was built differently from a lot of genre works. Specifically, a lot of the events that should have taken centre-stage - wars, social upheavals - were seen entirely through the eyes of the women of a Chinese household.

To me, it wasn't 'Star Wars' that shaped me; it was more 'Mary Tyler Moore' and, nowadays, 'Louie' and 'Girls.'

Art has often been and continues to be considered transcendent. I see this as misguided and, in fact, a way of subverting the powerful voice art can be in global discussions about politics, economics, society, culture, religion and international relations.

Sociological critics are waste makers.

I knew the term Stepford Wife, and I knew what that meant. I never read the book, and I think before I started filming I watched the movie. I thought it was very dated.

I'm caught up probably just as much in the consumer culture as the next person.

When I saw 'My Fair Lady,' I was surprised at how mean and misogynistic Henry was. Maybe that's why it's dropping out of public consciousness.

Republican politics can sometimes feel like you're walking into, you know, an Elks Club or bachelor party.

The Right is incredibly deft at getting earnest about all the wrong things.

There's almost a Rorschach-test quality about writing about 'Playboy'. What comes out in the press is not so much about me as it is about society.