Greil Marcus Quotes

Quotes about:

• What’s the impulse behind art? It’s saying in whatever language is the language of your work, “If I could move you as much as it moved me … if I can move anyone a tenth as much as that moved me, if I can spark the same sense of mystery and awe and surprise as that sparked in me, well that’s why I do what I do.”

  Greil Marcus

  Art, Moving, Sparks

  "Greil Marcus on How the Division of High vs. Low Robs Culture of Its Essence" by Maria Popova, www.brainpickings.org. May 13, 2013.

  46 Copy quote

• Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing... Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice

  Greil Marcus

  Writing, Voice, Everyday

  15 Copy quote

• We make the oldest stories new when we succeed, and we are trapped by the old stories when we fail

  Greil Marcus

  Success, Stories, Rehabilitation

  Greil Marcus (2015). “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition”, p.22, Penguin

  12 Copy quote

• Punk to me was a form of free speech. It was a moment when suddenly all kinds of strange voices that no reasonable person could ever have expected to hear in public were being heard all over the place.

  Greil Marcus

  Voice, Speech, Strange

  7 Copy quote

• We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours -- it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it.

  Greil Marcus

  Music, Song, Mean

  Greil Marcus (2015). “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition”, p.93, Penguin

  10 Copy quote

• What always attracted me to [Bob] Dylan, and what has sustained me as a Dylan listener, or has always continued to surprise me, is his voice, the way he sings, the way he wraps his voice around certain words, the way he backs off from melodic moments, the way he moves forward to grab something in a song that, were anybody else performing it, they would have no idea it was even there.

  Greil Marcus

  Song, Moving, Ideas

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  Greil Marcus

  People, Risk, Different

  Greil Marcus (2013). “The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years”, p.56, PublicAffairs

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Greil Marcus

  Country, America, Promise

  "Greil Marcus: a life in writing". Interview with Simon Reynolds, www.theguardian.com. February 17, 2012.

  9 Copy quote

• Along with a lot of other things, becoming a Bob Dylan fan made me a writer. I was never interested in figuring out what the songs meant. I was interested in figuring out my response to them, and other people's responses. I wanted to get closer to the music than I could by listening to it - I wanted to get inside of it, behind it, and writing about it through it, inside of it, behind it, was my way of doing that.

  Greil Marcus

  Song, Writing, People

  Greil Marcus (2011). “Bob Dylan: Writings 1968-2010”, p.17, Faber & Faber

  10 Copy quote

• Listening is like running down a mountain on a switchback trail, the sound of surprise generating its own momentum. There’s a punk glee inside the bluegrass craft–and a punk vehemence inside the bluegrass smile.

  Greil Marcus

  Running, Listening, Mountain

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Greil Marcus

  Trying, Movement, Youth

  Greil Marcus (2014). “Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century”, p.20, Faber & Faber

  8 Copy quote

• I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

  Greil Marcus

  Ideas, Want, Projects

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Greil Marcus

  Struggle, Interesting, May

  Greil Marcus (2015). “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition”, p.32, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Greil Marcus

  Hearing Things, Wake Up, Want

  "Greil Marcus: a life in writing". Interview with Simon Reynolds, www.theguardian.com. February 17, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• Rock 'n' Roll is a combination of good ideas dried up by fads, terrible junk, hideous failings in taste and judgment, gullibility and manipulation, moments of unbelievable clarity and invention, pleasure, fun, vulgarity, excess, novelty and utter enervation.

  Greil Marcus

  Fun, Rocks, Ideas

  Greil Marcus (2014). “Mystery Train”, p.104, Faber & Faber

  7 Copy quote

• It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

  Greil Marcus

  Culture, Dead Ends, Myth

  Greil Marcus (2015). “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition”, p.110, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Greil Marcus

  Betrayal, Failure, Simple

  Greil Marcus (2015). “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition”, p.33, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• Think about how rare it is for anyone to encounter a teacher who can open you up to the notion that there is an infinite amount of meaning and possibility and inspiration in the smallest thing before you.

  Greil Marcus

  Teacher, Inspiration, Thinking

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

  6 Copy quote

• If Bob Dylan really is an historian in and of himself in his work, in his performances, he is also an historian with a unique sense of humor. There's always been a bit of a stand-up comic in him.

  Greil Marcus

  Unique, Bob, Sense Of Humor

  Source: www.barnesandnoble.com

  6 Copy quote

• I am a critic who is pulled toward history. But Bob Dylan himself is a great historian. He is an historian who acts out history. So it always has a personal stamp. It always has a particular timbre. It always has a particular howl, or a moan, in that voice.

  Greil Marcus

  Voice, Bob, Timbre

  "Talkin’ Bob Dylan". Interview with James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. October 19, 2010.

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Song, Fun, People

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Greil Marcus

  Reading, Writing, Mean

  6 Copy quote

• Elvis' early music has drama because as he sang he was escaping limits.

  Greil Marcus

  Drama, Escaping, Limits

  Greil Marcus (2015). “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition”, p.143, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Greil Marcus

  Powerful, Writing, Earthquakes

  "Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century". Book by Greil Marcus, 1989.

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Greil Marcus

  Taken, Thinking, Sound

  "This is Greil Marcus’ Brain on 'Shuffle'". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. October 18, 2010.

  5 Copy quote

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