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" Have you noticed the people most likely to be up in arms about governments apparently spying on us tend to be the most non-private people you know? The people launching petitions and wailing about Big Brother and data collection are most likely to be the most constant self-presenters. "

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" A suit is just a suit: a practical garment, not a ceremonial robe; it can be worn out to dinner with friends or for a visit to an art gallery. Its beauty and craftsmanship are utterly wasted if you think of it as something magical and symbolic. "

Russell Smith

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You

Beauty

" Canadian writers don't live in gated mansions; you can just talk to them when you see them lining up at the Second Cup. "

Russell Smith

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Talk

" I don't see my artist friends as any more neurotic or addiction-prone than the others. The roommates I have had who were into triathlons or environmentalism were just as crazy as the poets, just as prone to tears over gardening or air conditioners, just as ready to kite a cheque or binge on cookie dough. "

" Yes, the hunky barista looks even more terrifically masculine with three days' growth on his chin. Guys under 50 mostly do. But when your beard is partly or largely grey, that stubble can just look a little unwashed. Sadly, when you're over 50, different rules apply. "

" There is something insouciant and boyish about the sockless ankle in summer. "

" It's great that I can look up a fact instantly on my cellphone, but I miss the days in my room with a dog-eared, text-heavy paperback, immersed in the statistics of crime and punishment and lunacy, completely alone with the narrative of human depravity. "

" An Indian tribe is sovereign to the extent that the U.S. permits it to be sovereign. "

" Most men are petrified of standing out in any way or being thought superficial. "

" My son craves picture books about Transformers and Ninja Turtles and the Hulk; they show one fantastic creature smashing or zapping another into smithereens on page after page. They are dull and ugly and show no interesting stories or models of conflict resolution or character building. "

" No matter how fine your suit and your shoes, you will remind everyone that you are not yet a grownup man by wearing them with your old college knapsack, in its nasty, nylon glory. "

" There is actually no such thing as an Artist type. 'Artist' is just an economic designation, a box you tick on a form. We are all people, and we are all creative. "

" Here is a fundamental conflict in educated society: We are not supposed to value beauty so highly, and yet who can defend against its sheer power to move, its rhetorical force? "

" I have argued about the future of fiction with jaded novelists, far-seeing postmodernists, technologists, television critics. The argument that future generations will not know the pleasures of the novel has been a staple of book reviewing since at least 1960. "

" What is a literary festival? Imagine a sort of cross between school and church. There are no actual festivities; what there are is a lot of public readings. "

" What makes a publisher decide to market a book to a particular audience is not the subject matter but the style. "

" Ah, the intractable Canadian problem: Winter and finery are basically incompatible. "

" Even in early adulthood, men can't be told what to wear; they can only be subtly moved by example, encouragement, and a generally sophisticated atmosphere. "

" In the best stories, people are morally complex; they are flawed. We read them because the world is flawed, and we want to see it truthfully represented. And because it can be thrilling to be shocked and upset, and even to feel, for chilling moments, what it's like to be a bad person. "

" Anything that encourages a boy to open a book, in a world of more violent and therefore more compelling video games, is something I'm going to pay for. "

" Indeed, the whole point of the man bun, I have surmised, is to assert a high proficiency at yoga. There are no yoga-achievement badges, no coloured belts like judo, so the male yoga expert needs some other kind of visible symbol. "

Russell Smith

Kind

Point

" Unseasonal clothing actually only stands out when it's visibly uncomfortable. "

" Men over 60 often think that if they wear athletic shoes - soft-soled referee shoes or hiking shoes or actual running shoes - then they will look more youthful. The contrary is true. "

" Everyone likes to hear that their eccentricities and their addictions are simply evidence of their sensitive artistic nature. "

" The only pleasurable part of taking the subway, as everyone will agree, is concocting elaborate fantasies about what it would be like to be married to the most interesting strangers you see there. "

" I am indeed completely nuts, but that doesn't mean I don't care about how I look. Sometimes, I admit, I will privilege appearance over comfort. "

" The novel is just fine: It's novelists who aren't doing so well. "

" Possibly the strangest book ever made, the 'Codex Seraphinianus' is an encyclopedia of an imaginary world, with illegible calligraphy - it is written in an alphabet no one can understand - and surreal drawings of odd beasts and machines. "

" The only thing that makes a book YA is that it is about teenagers, and it is written in a very conventional, non-artsy, non-pretentious way. YA is not the place for the oblique or the cryptic. If it is in any way experimental in form, it is not YA. "

" I am so sick of being exhorted, as a writer, to improve the world by representing it in a more hopeful way. "

" The locale does not determine the dress code; the host does. "