There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality.
Sentimentality, like pornography, is fragmented emotion; a natural consequence of a high visual gradient in any culture.
Every ambiguous, false, tearful, emotional exaggeration brings about that typically kitsch attitude which could be defined as "sentimentality. "
Sentimentality - that's what we call the sentiment we don't share.
I would say that love today is a relatively rare phenomenon, that we have a great deal of sentimentality; we have a great deal of illusion about love, namely as a. . . as something one falls in.
I drive around the streets an inch away from weeping, ashamed of my sentimentality and possible love.
Sentimentality , the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel.
Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.
I was not exploiting any real individual's story in writing ROOM, of course I was aware that my novel, by commenting on such situations, would run the risk of falling into those traps of voyeurism, sensationalism and sentimentality.
I honestly never intended food to occupy so much of my creative work. Food-writing often seems about to plummet straight into sentimentality. I think food can be dangerous to write about because if you don't manage to mediate it somehow, it can be the worst sort of greeting card.
By destroying the peasant economy and driving the peasant from the country to the town, the famine creates a proletariat. . . Furthermore the famine can and should be a progressive factor not only economically. It will force the peasant to reflect on the bases of the capitalist system, demolish faith in the tsar and tsarism, and consequently in due course make the victory of the revolution easier. . . Psychologically all this talk about feeding the starving and so on essentially reflects the usual sugary sentimentality of our intelligentsia.
Detachment, lack of sentimentality, originality, a lot of things that sound rather empty. I know what they mean. Let's say, "visual impact" may not mean much to anybody. I could point it out though. I mean it's a quality that something has or does not have. Coherence. Well, some things are weak, some things are strong.
Patriotism has become a mere national self assertion, a sentimentality of flag-cheering with no constructive duties.
In the future I'm going to devote less time to sentimentality and more time to reality.
Sentiment, crystallized, grows into sentimentality. It lost all spontaneity, which was the essence of feeling. It was dated--old-fashioned.
Children's books are looked on as a sideline of literature. A special smile. They are usually thought to be associated with women. I was determined not to have this label of sentimentality put on me so I signed by my intials, hoping people wouldn't bother to wonder if the books were written by a man, woman or kangaroo.
Aaron Sorkin uses a lot of the same people again and again - the people he likes. I think if there's ever a part for me, he would consider me for it. I hope so. Sometimes familiarity breeds contempt, other times it helps you. It's just amazing to work with his scripts. There's never any fat in them. It's all perfect, and there's such a rhythm to it. The musicality of his writing - it's so specific and unique to him, and such a joy to play as an actor, because there's no sentimentality.
Sentimentality is a superstructure covering brutality.
Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty. . . the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent humanity, the mark of cruelty.
I believe that people want the scent of love, more than anything else. And I don't mean sentimentality, I don't mean mush. I mean that idea, that human beings are more alike than we are different. And that means that I can love you. I don't mean support you in bad things you do, that I can understand because you're a human being.