Greil Marcus Quotes

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All quotes by Greil Marcus: Dylan Failing Listening Songs Writing more...
  • 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.

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

    Source: www.barnesandnoble.com
  • I was the first records editor at Rolling Stone, and there were no rules. There was nothing to fall back on as to how do you write about this kind of music, so people were trying absolutely everything with a great sense of freedom and experimentation and success and failure, and a feeling of, “My God, people are actually paying attention to this. Let’s pretend they aren’t because we don’t want to be intimidated by what somebody might think of what we’re saying.

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

    Greil Marcus (2015). “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition”, p.143, Penguin
  • Van Morrison remains a singer who can be compared to no other in the history of modern popular music.

    "When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison". Book by Greil Marcus, 2010.
  • You're going to react to a painting in a way that the painting demands you react.

  • I never could understand - it was impossible for me to get my head around - what the furor was, what the sense of betrayal and anger and rage was about Bob Dylan's beginning to perform with a band, to play rock-and-roll, to get on the radio.

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

    Song   Writing   People  
    Greil Marcus (2011). “Bob Dylan: Writings 1968-2010”, p.17, Faber & Faber
  • It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

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

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

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

    "Greil Marcus examines culture through prism of pop" by Sam Whiting, www.sfgate.com. October 30, 2011.
  • 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: a life in writing". Interview with Simon Reynolds, www.theguardian.com. February 17, 2012.
  • 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.

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

  • 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 (2015). “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition”, p.33, Penguin
  • Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.

    Greil Marcus (2015). “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition”, p.109, Penguin
  • 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.

    Source: www.barnesandnoble.com
  • 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 (2015). “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition”, p.32, Penguin
  • 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 (2014). “Mystery Train”, p.104, Faber & Faber
  • I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

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

    Greil Marcus (2015). “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition”, p.22, Penguin
  • 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 on How the Division of High vs. Low Robs Culture of Its Essence" by Maria Popova, www.brainpickings.org. May 13, 2013.
  • 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.

    "This is Greil Marcus’ Brain on 'Shuffle'". Interview with Michael Mechanic, www.motherjones.com. October 18, 2010.
  • I had tremendous fun fooling around with the way people talked about songs, just the way that became another way of understanding the world.

    Song   People  
  • 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.

  • 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.

    Writing  
  • 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.

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

    "Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century". Book by Greil Marcus, 1989.
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 33 quotes from the Author Greil Marcus, starting from June 19, 1945! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
    Greil Marcus quotes about: Dylan Failing Listening Songs Writing