Contemporary Quotations

Those who are truly contemporary are those who neither perfectly coincide with their time nor adapt to its demands...Contemporariness, then, is that relationship with time that adheres to it through a disconnection.

Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law.

The engine of ancient society was religion but the engine of contemporary society, as I see it, is advertising.

Since 1985, I have written about contemporary Jewish practice and the Jewish community.

Contemporary thinkers would say that man is continuously transcending himself.

It's become very popular in contemporary films to have the twist ending.

I'm not doing contemporary songs unless something comes along that really knocks my socks off.

You know, I listen to contemporary music all the time

Poles must understand history but we must also overcome it if it is obstructing our contemporary goals.

The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.

I love black-and-white movies that are about contemporary subjects.

I really don't take any interest at all in contemporary comedy.

One of the great currents in the contemporary experience of art is that it seems to come out of the experience of the author.

I never paid attention to what was contemporary or what was commercial, it didn't mean anything to me.

Anxiety is the handmaiden of contemporary ambition.

I read very little contemporary anything.

Aimee Parkison offers a distinct new voice to contemporary fiction. Her seductive stories explore childhood as a realm of sorrows, and reveal the afflictions of adults who emerge from this private geography.

Most of my writer friends are women, and they're all extremely talented, so of course I think the state of contemporary fiction for women is pretty great. Which is to say there is a ton of amazing work out there. These women are writing hard. There's much to be said. We're on it, chief.

My work has been marginalized as far as the jazz-business complex is concerned, or the contemporary-music complex.

I write contemporary fiction, and that is what my readers want to read.

I like all sorts of things, not necessarily just Victorian. Even though I tend to read a lot of Victorian novels, I like a lot of contemporary stuff.

I feel that what I do is always contemporary with the society I'm living in... If I wanted to explain myself, that's how I'd explain myself: that I'm a diarist.

You cannot even begin to understand contemporary African politics if you have not read this fascinating book

All art is contemporary, if it's alive, and if it's not alive, what's the point of it?

I want to be a contemporary artist and at the same time a romantic!

Obviously I always wanted to do a contemporary piece.

Contemporary industrial society is now characterised more than ever by the need for stupefying work where it is no longer a real necessity.

I don't know what issues concerning identity have helped contemporary fiction evolve to what it is now. All I know is that the range of voices that are being heard and published is a lot more diverse than when I was coming up.

Going back to the noir fiction of the 30s, 40s and 50s. It's very contemporary.

I don't think there's a defined contemporary American musical, do you?

If we wish to discuss knowledge in the most highly developed contemporary society, we must answer the preliminary question of what methodological representation to apply to that society

The main advantage of being a reviewer is that you read a lot. A lot of books get sent to you, and you have an amazing vantage point from which to observe what's going on in contemporary fiction - not only genre stuff, the whole spectrum.

Contemporary art hates you.

Contemporary Britain seems an endlessly fascinating place to me - but if I knew a little bit more about other places, and other times, maybe it wouldn't.

The 1,000 Buddha, to me, is almost like a contemporary art piece.

My musical life started with hearing and being fascinated by contemporary music.

Strangers are contemporary posterity. [Fr., Les etrangers sont la posterite contemporaine.]

The world shall perish not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder

The contemporary authors I most admire are Nick Hornby and Jonathan Tropper.

The writing you allude to is a form of dissent, but it's also expressive of the need to evolve beyond what is turgid and stale in contemporary fiction.

In fact, of course, I hold that propositions that contemporary philosophers would properly count as 'empirical' can be necessary and be known to be such.

I wanted to disconnect from contemporary architecture

The poet is always our contemporary.

If contemporary literary fiction doesn't read a bit like science fiction then it's probably not all that contemporary, is it

I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality.

Here is one of the fundamental defects of American fiction--perhaps the one character that sets it off sharply from all other known kinds of contemporary fiction. It habitually exhibits, not a man of delicate organization in revolt against the inexplicable tragedy of existence, but a man of low sensibilities and elemental desires yielding himself gladly to his environment, and so achieving what, under a third-rate civilization, passes for success. To get on: this is the aim. To weigh and reflect, to doubt and rebel: this is the thing to be avoided.

Without doubt, Thomas Edison is my greatest contemporary.