Life & Wisdom Quote by Todd Solondz

Fame, in Solondz's telling, is less a spotlight than a weird new permission structure. Strangers have always felt entitled to approach; the "funny thing" is that recognition doesn’t eliminate that entitlement, it simply refurbishes it. The sentence pivots on "but now": the same intrusion gets rebranded as affection. Solondz is dryly noting how celebrity turns boundary-crossing into a social norm, even a compliment, while leaving the core dynamic intact: someone else deciding they get access to you.

The phrasing is doing quiet double duty. "Still" implies this was happening before the name recognition, suggesting a baseline of public intimacy that’s slightly uncomfortable. "Seem to feel comfortable" places the discomfort where it belongs: not in his behavior, but in theirs. He’s observing a kind of social confidence that can be innocent, but also oblivious. That’s very Solondz: the uneasy comedy of people behaving badly while convinced they’re being kind.

Context matters because his work trades in misread signals and brittle politeness. Audiences who seek him out often feel like they "get" him - and that feeling can spill into real-life interactions, where praise becomes another form of projection. "They say nice things" lands as both relief and suspicion. Nice compared to what? Compared to criticism, sure, but also compared to the older, more anonymous version of being approached for no reason at all. Solondz lets the compliment stand while quietly underlining the cost: recognition doesn’t grant privacy; it just changes the script.