Greil Marcus quotes

We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail. (Greil Marcus)
The Sixties are most generously described as a time when people took part - when they stepped out of themselves and acted in public, as people who didn't know what would happen next, but who were sure that acts of true risk and fear would produce something different from what they had been raised to take for granted. View quote
Greil Marcus
Every youth movement presents itself as a loan to the future, and tries to call in its lien in advance, but when there is no future all loans are canceled. View quote
Greil Marcus
It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths. View quote
Greil Marcus
No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes. View quote
Greil Marcus
Van Morrison remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of modern popular music. View quote
Greil Marcus
...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. View quote
Greil Marcus
You're going to react to a painting in a way that the painting demands you react. View quote
Greil Marcus
Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering, when the country fails to live up to its promises, or actively betrays them. View quote
Greil Marcus
It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits. View quote
Greil Marcus
I had tremendous fun fooling around with the way people talked about songs, just the way that became another way of understanding the world. (Greil Marcus)
Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him. View quote
Greil Marcus
Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits. View quote
Greil Marcus
I never find myself even catching lyrics until something in the sound has taken me captive. Thinking about anything else is just the pleasurable byproduct of wow. View quote
Greil Marcus
I learned that when something just has to be said to move the discussion along, or broaden it or deepen it, if I can just keep my mouth shut for five minutes a student will say it. So for me a lot of teaching is about keeping my mouth shut. View quote
Greil Marcus
Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether. View quote
Greil Marcus
Bob Dylan continues to release odd and unsettling records, and to do odd and unsettling things on stage. So the term 'still' seems meaningless to me. But the real answer is simple: I listen to Bob Dylan for pleasure more than I listen to anyone else for pleasure. View quote
Greil Marcus
Hearing things like 'Wake Up' by Lora Logic, or the Raincoats' 'In Love' - that was something I wasn't prepared for. I couldn't hear anything that came before it in the music, and I didn't want to. I was absolutely in love with its out-of-nowhereness. View quote
Greil Marcus
If 'Mystery Train' is my Nixon book and 'Lipstick Traces' my Reagan book, 'Invisible Republic' is my Bill Clinton book. I really liked Clinton. He made me proud to be part of this country again. For all of his failings, the way he put all that he'd done in jeopardy, I supported him from beginning to end. View quote
Greil Marcus
I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up. View quote
Greil Marcus
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. (Greil Marcus)
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. View quote
Greil Marcus