List of Pauline Kael Quotes

The Worst Thing About Movie-making Is That It's Like Life: Nobody Can Go Back To Correct The Mistakes.

In Show Business There's Not Much Point In Asking Yourself If Someone Really Likes You Or If He Just Thinks You Can Be Useful To Him, Because There's No Difference.

Movies, Far More Than The Traditional Arts, Are Tied To Big Money. Without A Few Independent Critics, There's Nothing Between The Public And The Advertisers.

Reality, Like God And History, Tends To Direct People To Wherever They Want To Go.

Imagining [the Wizard Of Oz] Without Judy Garland Is A Bit Like Dancing On Wet Cement: You Can Do It, But Why Would You Want To?

Television As We Have It Isn't An Art Form - It's A Piece Of Furniture That Is Good For A Few Things.

A Book Might Be Written On The Injustice Of The Just.

Kevin Costner Has Feathers In His Hair And Feathers In His Head. The Indians Should Have Called Him 'plays With Camera.

The Slender, Swift Bruce Lee Was The Fred Astaire Of Martial Arts, And Many Of The Fights That Could Be Merely Brutal Come Across As Lightning-fast Choreography.

In The Sixties, The Recycling Of Pop Culture Turning It Into Pop Art And Camp Had Its Own Satirical Zest. Now We're Into A Different Kind Of Recycling. Moviemakers Give Movies Of The Past An Authority That Those Movies Didn't Have; They Inflate Images That May Never Have Compelled Belief, Images That Were No More Than Shorthand Gestures And They Use Them Not As Larger-than-life Jokes But As Altars.

Writers Who Go To Hollywood Still Follow The Classic Pattern: Either You Get Disgusted By 'them' And You Leave Or You Want The Money And You Become Them.

What's Disgusting About The Dirty Harry Movies Is That Eastwood Plays This Angry Tension As Righteous Indignation.