John Leonard Quotes

popular culture is where we go to talk to and agree with one another; to simplify ourselves; to find our herd. It’s like going to the Automat to buy an emotion. The thrills are cheap and the payoffs predictable and, after a while, the repetition is a bummer. Whereas books are where we go alone to complicate ourselves. Inside this solitude, we take on contours, textures, perspectives. Heightened language levitates the reader. Great art transfigures. And when we go back to it, it’s full of even more surprises. We get older; it gets smarter.

~ John Leonard

To be capable of embarrassment is the beginning of moral consciousness. Honor grows from qualms.

~ John Leonard

It seems to me that my whole life I've been standing on some tower or a pillbox or a trampoline, waving the names of writers, as if we needed rescue. And the first person I had to rescue was myself.

~ John Leonard

Baseball happens to be a game of cumulative tension but football, basketball and hockey are played with hand grenades and machine guns.

~ John Leonard

Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?

~ John Leonard