I don't know that there's a division between American and British, European, South American, Asian sensibilities when it comes to rock n' roll or, really, any form of music. Songs travel, and people take them into their lives in all different kinds of unpredictable and really untraceable ways.

Greil Marcus

Buddy Holly had something very different from the other great early rock n' roll stars, whether it was Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Bo Diddley. He came across as so ordinary, as such a nerd. You know, he was a big guy, and he carried a gun. He was anything but a nerd.

Greil Marcus

I'm a fan of Oliver Stone. I like his movies, I like his excess, and I think he has a great capacity for empathy and it comes out more powerfully in this movie than in any of his other films, even the formal 'I'm identifying with the underdog' movies like 'Born on the Fourth of July.'

Greil Marcus

Bob Dylan continues to release odd and unsettling records, and to do odd and unsettling things on stage. So the term 'still' seems meaningless to me. But the real answer is simple: I listen to Bob Dylan for pleasure more than I listen to anyone else for pleasure.

Greil Marcus

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

Greil Marcus

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

Greil Marcus

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.

Greil Marcus

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

Greil Marcus

Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.

Greil Marcus

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.

Greil Marcus

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.

Greil Marcus

Hearing things like 'Wake Up' by Lora Logic, or the Raincoats' 'In Love' - that was something I wasn't prepared for. I couldn't hear anything that came before it in the music, and I didn't want to. I was absolutely in love with its out-of-nowhereness.

Greil Marcus

I learned a long time ago that not becoming friendly with the people you write about is a way to maintain your freedom to say whatever you damn well please.

Greil Marcus

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.

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.

Greil Marcus

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.

Greil Marcus

My father was executive officer, which is second-in-command, on a ship called the Hull, one of three ordered into a typhoon by Admiral Halsey - an insane and sadistic decision.

Greil Marcus

There's been a streak of vengeance and carnage in all of Dylan's records except for the Christmas record, since 2001, since 'Love and Theft.' Particularly on 'Modern Times' in 2006.

Greil Marcus

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?

Greil Marcus

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

Greil Marcus

I've always known why I do what I do. I didn't need to be psychoanalysed to find that out.

Greil Marcus