Quotes from Greil Marcus

My ideal reader is somebody who trips over a copy of my book on the sidewalk; then they pick it up and read as they walk. Somebody who comes in knowing nothing, caring nothing, but responds to the story.

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.

Perhaps the most pernicious strain of contemporary criticism says one thing before it says anything else, says it to whatever historical event or cultural happenstance is supposedly at issue: 'You can't fool me.'

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.

Words that in their everyday surrealism have no parallel in contemporary writing... Music that mines the deep veins of fatalism in the Appalachian voice

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

After Chuck Berry died, it seemed web sites popped up like mushrooms to show where he'd taken the guitar introduction to 'Johnny B. Goode' from to prove that his music was nothing new, that it was only ignorance, or vanity, that led his listeners to think that not only was the music different - they might be, too.

There is no pop category, let alone any infinitely gene-sliced genre name, to contain the lead in Rihanna's voice in 'Needed Me.'

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.

I want another idea, another project, but you can't make them up. They show up.

'Money Changes Everything' is this terribly despairing, heartbreaking song.

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

I think criticism, or a critical engagement with history, has a good deal to do with a willingness to be fooled.

When you celebrate somebody's bad work on the terms that define their good work, how can that artist have anything but contempt for an audience that can't tell the good from the bad?

You're going to react to a painting in a way that the painting demands you react.

I tend not to meet the people I write about because I'm not really interested in the people I write about as people. I don't want to know about their family life. I don't want to know about their bad habits or their good deeds. I'm interested in their work.

Sometimes you can listen to a song all your life without hearing it.

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.

When I'm struck by things, I want to hear more and find out more. I remember when Lana Del Rey was on 'SNL,' this supposedly disastrous performance. She's doing this pretentious torch song, and I thought, 'I don't know what she's doing, but it's really moving me.'

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.

It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

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.

Elvis transcends his talent to the point of dispensing with it altogether.

I had tremendous fun fooling around with the way people talked about songs, just the way that became another way of understanding the world.