Wealth & Money Quote by John Simon

Restless boredom, dressed up as civic observation. John Simon’s line lands with the clipped impatience of a critic watching an audience fidget in its seat: everyone is scanning for a purchase, a cause, a distraction, a “scene” that will convert spare hours and disposable income into identity. The first two sentences are almost anthropological in their repetition - “looking around… looking to do something” - as if the culture has been reduced to motion without direction, consumption without conviction.

Then comes the knife twist: “The question is, what?” It’s a tiny sentence that performs Simon’s whole métier. He isn’t asking out of curiosity; he’s implying that most available answers are suspect. The subtext is a critique of a society where desire is plentiful but standards are scarce, where the marketplace offers infinite options and very little orientation. For a critic, that “what” is both challenge and indictment: if people are hungry for meaning, who is feeding them, and with what?

Contextually, Simon wrote in an era when culture was rapidly professionalizing into entertainment, when institutions and advertisers got better at translating attention into revenue. His phrasing anticipates the modern attention economy: people have time, money, and a chronic sense of “should,” but they’re not sure what’s worth it. The quote works because it turns a neutral fact (people want to spend) into a moral pressure test. It doesn’t sermonize; it simply leaves the emptiness audible.