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Sarah Churchwell Quotes

People who are given whatever they want soon develop a sense of entitlement and rapidly lose their sense of proportion.

People who are given whatever they want soon develop a sense of entitlement and rapidly lose their sense of proportion.

Sarah Churchwell
People, Want, Entitlement

Fitzgerald could sense that America was poised on the edge of a vast transformation, and wrote a novel bridging his moment and ours. The Great Gatsby made manifest precisely what Fitzgerald’s contemporaries couldn’t bear to see, and thus it is not only the Jazz Age novel par excellence, but also the harbinger of its decline and fall.

Sarah Churchwell
Fall, America, Excellence
Sarah Churchwell (2013). “Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby”, p.13, Hachette UK

Music - not just the lyrics, but the music itself - expresses confused or illicit passions: rage, lust, envy, frustration, channeling these energies and creating an outlet for them.

Sarah Churchwell
Confused, Passion, Frustration

Art cannot, perhaps, impose order on life—but it teaches us to admire even the unruliest of revelations.

Sarah Churchwell
Art, Order, Revelations
Sarah Churchwell (2013). “Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby”, p.23, Hachette UK

If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.

Sarah Churchwell
Memories, Party, Guests
Sarah Churchwell (2013). “Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby”, p.71, Hachette UK

Facts might be false if they challenge the conviction of a mind already made up.

Sarah Churchwell
Challenges, Mind, Might
Sarah Churchwell (2005). “The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe”, p.102, Macmillan

Pop music provides not just the soundtrack to our lives, as the cliche goes; it releases our emotions and helps us to articulate them. This is why music is so important to adolescents, who are struggling with questions of identity and self-expression.

Sarah Churchwell
Struggle, Self, Expression

History is prone to mistakes in identity, and facts are not always solid things.

Sarah Churchwell
Mistake, Identity, Facts
Sarah Churchwell (2013). “Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby”, p.70, Hachette UK

There is nothing that 'Sesame Street' can't teach you, if you let it.

Sarah Churchwell
Sesame Street, Teach, Streets

Racism is an effect of slavery, not the other way around. Once slavery was abolished, not only did racism not disappear, neither did the economic system it upheld.

Sarah Churchwell
Racism, Slavery, Way

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