“ So always avoid banality. That is, avoid illustrating the author's words and remarks. If you want to create a true masterpiece you must always avoid beautiful lies: the truths on the calender under ea… Jerzy Grotowski
“ At Dachau. We had a wonderful pool for the garrison children. It was even heated. But that was before we were transferred. Dachau was ever so much nicer than Auschwitz. But then, it was in the Reich.… William Styron
“ He was permanently impressed by the most irrelevant banalities and impossible to impress with real novelty, meaning, or conflict. And he was too moronic to be properly self-loathing--so it was my duty… Jonathan Lethem
“ Most people seem to turn off at some point in their lives. Maybe it's thirty or forty. For most people it's lots younger. They stop there. Stop growing or changing or learning or something. From that… Katherine Dunn
“ It is the sheer ugliness and banality of everyday life which turns my blood to ice and makes me cringe in terror. Jean Lorrain
“ Intellectuals are judged not by their morals, but by the quality of their ideas, which are rarely reducible to simple verdicts of truth or falsity, if only because banalities are by definition accurat… Perry Anderson
“ In terms of "quiet" bourgeois democracy two fundamental possibilities are open to the industrial worker: identification with the bourgeoisie, which holds a higher position in the social scale, or iden… Wilhelm Reich
“ I sort of thought that maybe people had to talk that way, sort of saying the same things over and over because that way they can get along together without thinking." She stopped and thought. Why I wa… Shirley Jackson
“ Evil that arises out of ordinary thinking and is committed by ordinary people is the norm, not the exception. Ervin Staub
“ Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don’t let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, “honest criticism and sensitive appreciation… Elif Shafak
“ Perhaps Lila was right: my book—even though it was having so much success—really was bad, and this was because it was well organized, because it was written with obsessive care, because I hadn’t been… Elena Ferrante
“ He was looking for the Knight of Faith, the real prodigy. That real prodigy, having set its relations with the infinite, was entirely at home in the finite. Able to carry the jewel of faith, making th… Saul Bellow
“ I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a… David Foster Wallace
