Brendan Gill Quotes

A vain attempt to subdue that unsubduable country.

The big houses sat in self-congratulatory propinquity on their level green lawns…stout matrons seated elbow to elbow, implacably chaperoning a ball.

He stared the assorted meannesses and failed promises of American life straight in the face, and they stared back.

In the later nineteenth century, the tops of skyscrapers often took the shape of domes, surmounted by jaunty gilded lanterns; later came ziggurats, mausoleums, Alexandrian lighthouses, miniature Parthenons. These charming follies contained neither royal corpses nor effigies of gods and goddesses; rather they contained large wooden tanks filled with water.