Russell Smith

“Only a tiny portion of music history involves a singer and a lyric. Songs in music are generally thought to be a minor form.”

“I dislike turtlenecks at the best of times, as they are always unflattering to the imperfect male physique, but when worn in combination with a v-neck sweater, they say 'Grandpa' louder than any other item of clothing.”

“My father was a graduate student at Oxford in the early 1960s, where the conventions and etiquette of clothing were crucial to the pervasive class consciousness of the place and time.”

“Anything that encourages a boy to open a book, in a world of more violent and therefore more compelling video games, is something I'm going to pay for.”

“There is actually no such thing as an Artist type. 'Artist' is just an economic designation, a box you tick on a form. We are all people, and we are all creative.”

“Everyone likes to hear that their eccentricities and their addictions are simply evidence of their sensitive artistic nature.”

“A song is a short composition for voice and instruments. It is a piece of sung poetry set to music. It is usually only a few minutes long.”

“Anyone who has set out to invent a purely imaginary story knows that the whole thing is fantasy, from beginning to end; there must be a sense of magic created about the most restrained of naturalism.”

“All coffee shops now have WiFi. Why bring a book when you could be wittily attacking some idiot columnist on Twitter, or responding to your date requests, or posting a picture of your foot? All of that is more gripping and immediate and social than books.”

“Personally, I see little distinction between an artistic mentality and criminality. You couldn't possibly create a compelling story without some wickedness or some fascination with the disgusting. Being good is a hindrance to a writer.”

“An Indian tribe is sovereign to the extent that the U.S. permits it to be sovereign.”

“There is something insouciant and boyish about the sockless ankle in summer.”

“I have never, ever, not once, met a writer who said he or she would never read a mystery or a story set in some imagined future.”

“I went to Queen's - a fine university with the proudly stupidest frosh week in the country. This was, when I was there, supposed to be somehow evidence of a higher social class.”

“I don't see my artist friends as any more neurotic or addiction-prone than the others. The roommates I have had who were into triathlons or environmentalism were just as crazy as the poets, just as prone to tears over gardening or air conditioners, just as ready to kite a cheque or binge on cookie dough.”

“The locale does not determine the dress code; the host does.”

“I am so sick of being exhorted, as a writer, to improve the world by representing it in a more hopeful way.”

“The only pleasurable part of taking the subway, as everyone will agree, is concocting elaborate fantasies about what it would be like to be married to the most interesting strangers you see there.”

“My son craves picture books about Transformers and Ninja Turtles and the Hulk; they show one fantastic creature smashing or zapping another into smithereens on page after page. They are dull and ugly and show no interesting stories or models of conflict resolution or character building.”

“If you define eccentricity as creativity, then yes, creativity is eccentricity.”