Nick Tosches Quotes
When I was young, I kept trying to read 'Moby-Dick', and I couldn't get that far into it. And I kept thinking, 'Well, man, if I can't read the great American novel, I could never be a writer.' And this bothered me a great deal.
Quotes to Explore
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What other grown-up gets told how to do their job so often as a writer?
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I am not an autobiographical writer.
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I've basically worked as a journalist and a writer.
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We never had books at home, but my dad, seeing how keen I was to read, took me to Islington Library when I was about eight and we pulled out two - a Biggles and a science fiction novel. I never got the ace fighter pilot but fell in love with all things to do with the future and space. Isaac Asimov soon became my guiding star.
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I was a writer for hire. I wrote to pay the bills.
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I never read about photography.
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My mother taught me to read.
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My grandmother died in childbirth, and my great-aunt lived with us. She had bound feet. She never knew how to read or write.
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A writer has to live with a sense of honor.
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I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again.
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I'm not a writer where I feel particularly blessed by great inspiration every day. I don't. I have to work really hard at it to try and say the things I'm concerned with.
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I love bookstores and booksellers. In my novel 'Dirty Martini,' I thanked over 3,000 booksellers by name in the back matter.
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I would read all day if I could.
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When I was 17 or 18 I wanted to become a wine expert, and my parents wouldn't let me drink. So I was devastated. All I could do was read, and I read and I read. And I'd read something like, you know, 'Subtle hints of cassis.'
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There are three things that make a person a writer: inspiration, perspiration and desperation.
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I'm not a great writer.
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You can't believe everything you read. I am only six foot three, by the way.
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I tend to read non-fiction.
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The art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate images and to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity is, in a sense, future memory.
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My doctor told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.
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I'm open to meet any person; I think we can learn from one another.
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When I was young, I kept trying to read 'Moby-Dick', and I couldn't get that far into it. And I kept thinking, 'Well, man, if I can't read the great American novel, I could never be a writer.' And this bothered me a great deal.
