Brendan Gill

Brendan Gill (4 October 1914 – 27 December 1997) wrote for The New Yorker for more than 60 years. He also contributed film criticism for Film Comment and wrote a popular book about his time at the New Yorker magazine.

Quotes

• In the later nineteenth century, the tops of skycrapers
  often took the shape of domes, surmounted by jaunty
  gilded lanterns; later came ziggurats, mausoleums,
  Alexandrian lighthouses, miniatures Parthenons. These
  charming follies contained neither royal corpses nor
  effigies of gods and goddesses; rather they contained
  large wooden tanks filled with water.
  • 1982, quoted in Laura Rosen Top of the City: New York's hidden rooftop world (1990) foreword, also quoted in Dictionary of Quotations, p. 355 (2005)
• He stared the assorted meannesses and failed promises of American life straight in the face, and they stared back.
  • 1990, On Walker Evan's photographs for James Agee's book on the destitute South. A New York Life, also quoted in Dictionary of Quotations, p. 355 (2005)

"not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious"

See also

• The New Yorker
• Film Comment