theparisreview:

“I used to read an awful lot. Then I found that I had a lot of information and very little knowledge. I couldn’t learn from reading. I was doing something else by reading, just filling up this hopper full of information, but it was undigested information. I used to think the more intelligence you had, the more knowledge you had, but it’s not true. Look at Bill Buckley; he uses his intelligence to further his own prejudices.

“Why one reads is important. If it’s just for escape, that’s all right, it’s like taking junk, it’s meaningless. It’s kind of an insult to yourself. Like modern conversation—it’s used to keep people away from one another, because people don’t feel assaulted by conversation so much as silence. People have to make conversation in order to fill up this void. Void is terrifying to most people. We can’t have a direct confrontation with somebody in silence—because what you’re really having is a full and more meaningful confrontation.”—Marlon Brando, Playboy, 1979

Thoughts?

I’m sure there is a spirited debate to be had here re the merits of reading, but Brando is spot on about Buckley.  Despite his eventual criticism of some white supremacists, I never saw a bigot so proud to be a bigot as Buckley.  I’ve never seen anything remotely like Buckley’s televised debate against a blind sailor in which he argued for an hour that the blind man’s life experiences were worth less than Buckley’s own simply because he perceived the world in a different way.