A Quote by Roberta Smith

The obsessions of others are opaque to the unobsessed, and thus easy to mock. NASCAR, jazz, baseball, roses, poetry, quilts, fishing. If we're lucky, we all have at least one.

Roberta Smith

Quote Topics

Poetry At Least One Baseball Easy Fishing Jazz Least Lucky Mock NASCAR Obsessions Opaque Others Quilts Roses Thus

Quote Author

Roberta Smith
American - Critic

Let others mock at you, oppose you, when you are under the influence of any passion; do not be in the least offended with those who mock at or oppose you, for they do you good; crucify your self-love and acknowledge the wrong, the error of your heart. But have the deepest pity for those who mock at words and works of faith and piety, of righteousness; for those who oppose the good which you are doing... God preserve you - getting exasperated at them.

Soren Kierkegaard

It's sort of like baseball - the more you know about baseball, the more you get into a baseball game. NASCAR is the same way.

Michael Waltrip

Poetry is a mock of a cry at finding a million dollars and a mock of a laugh at losing it.

Carl Sandburg

It's certainly easy to mock some things ... Oddly enough though I've never found it easy to mock anything of value. Only things that are tawdry and fatuous - perhaps it's just me.

Stephen Fry

It's easy to mock a man who has founded a religion based on John Coltrane, who considers 'A Love Supreme,' whatever its merits as a jazz album, to be holy scripture.

Tucker Carlson

I don't think that American drivers going to NASCAR are taking the easy way out because as I said, the racing is amazing; it's just that it's easier to adapt to what you grow up with. American drivers grow up with NASCAR, they know NASCAR, and that's where they want to go.

Jacques Villeneuve

When I began, poetry was very academic. You published little pamphlets from fancy presses. It was rather... chaste. There wasn't much public reading. Then there was poetry and jazz, which I don't think worked, though I love jazz.

John Fuller

NASCAR stepped up their safety concepts, and I think the drivers feel NASCAR is doing everything that can be done. So we are a little behind NASCAR in that respect. Someone in NASCAR realized there were certain things that could be done to make it safer. The same thing has to happen in football.

Jim Brown

I didn't understand NASCAR until I met some NASCAR fans. You talk to a couple of NASCAR fans and you'll see where a shiny car driving in a circle would fascinate them all day. And I can make fun of NASCAR fans, because if they chase me, I just turn right.

Alonzo Bodden

Jazz is smooth and cool. Jazz is rage. Jazz flows like water. Jazz never seems to begin or end. Jazz isn't methodical, but jazz isn't messy either. Jazz is a conversation, a give and take. Jazz is the connection and communication between musicians. Jazz is abandon.

Nat Wolff

A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

I'm very lucky that I got to spend my summers at my grandmother's house on Martha's Vineyard. My brother really loved fishing, and he spent a lot of summers working on a charter fishing boat.

Tatiana Schlossberg

Some women don't care how their quilts look. They piece the squares together any sort of way, but she couldn't stand careless sewing. She wanted her quilts, and Joy's, made right. Quilts stay a long time after people are gone from this world, and witness about them for good or bad. She wanted people to see, when she was gone, that she'd never been a shiftless or don't-care woman.

Julia Peterkin

I'm so lucky that 'The Vampire Diaries' happened. I'm so lucky that Warner Bros. pays me money. You have no idea. I should be on a fishing boat with my dad.

Kevin Williamson

I was a fan of baseball growing up. We played baseball; I used to play in an A&P parking lot. It wasn't always easy to find a good baseball field to play in.