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Greil Marcus Quotes (1945-)
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About Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus (born 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Greil Marcus quotes.
“The moments of perfect pleasure in Johnson's songs, and the beauty of those songs, remind one that it is not the simple presence of evil that is unbearable; what is unbearable is the impossibility of reconciling the facts of evil with the beauty of the world.”
“While it's well known that as one gets older, one tends to find changes in the world at large unsettling, confusing, fucking irritating, a rebuke to one's very existence, it's generally not a good idea to make a career out of saying so. (emphasis in the original)”
“...as I write, Johnny Rotten's first moments in "Anarchy in the U.K."–a rolling earthquake of a laugh, a buried shout, then hoary words somehow stripped of all claptrap and set down in the city streets–I AM AN ANTICHRIST–Remain as powerful as anything I know. Listening to the record today–listening to the way Johnny Rotten tears at his lines, and then hurls the pieces at the world; recalling the all-consuming smile he produced as he sang–my back stiffens; I pull away even as my scalp begins to sweat.”
“Complete freedom meant — no one knew. It was most readily defined in the negative: not this gap between the heaven promised in the new advertisements and the everyday satisfactions I can buy. Not the sense that when I leave my work for my family, and bring my family to a Sunday in the park, my leisure feels like work. Not this mad conviction that I’m a stranger in my own home town, that at work I feel like a machine, that in the park I feel like an advertisement, that at home I feel like a tourist.”
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Greil Marcus on Sunday
“Complete freedom meant — no one knew. It was most readily defined in the negative: not this gap between the heaven promised in the new advertisements and the everyday satisfactions I can buy. Not the sense that when I leave my work for my family, and bring my family to a Sunday in the park, my leisure feels like work.”
Greil Marcus on Uncle Sam (Vertigo)
“An old man lies crumpled on the sidewalk: he has thin white hair and a long white goatee. He's dressed in a black coat and red and white striped trousers. People pass on by. There's a fly on the old man's forehead. His left arm is stretched out, his fingers curled like a beggar's, but he looks you right in the face. His angry eyes says he lies on the pavement not to ask you for what you've got but to ask you how you got it. He might be a bum, he might be a judge; as you follow his story you keep changing your mind...”
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About Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus (born 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.