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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In fact, I don't read newspapers any longer.
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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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If a writer doesn't generate hostility, he is dead.
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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've never experienced writer's block. When it's going really well, my body temperature goes up, and I'm flushed. I get quite delirious.
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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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A writer will write with or without a movement; but at the same time, for Chicano, lesbian, gay and feminist writers-anybody writing against the grain of Anglo misogynist culture-political movements are what have allowed our writing to surface from the secret places in our notebooks into the public sphere.
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Within my own life, I read all the beloved novels by lamps of vegetable oil; I saw the Standard Oil invading my own village, I saw gas lamps in the Chinese shops in Shanghai; and I saw their elimination by electric lights.
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I was a really big fan of cartoons growing up, and I loved to read too much into them most of the time.
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Theres nothing more depressing than having everything and still feeling sad. We must learn to water our spiritual garden.
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I get mad when people are against pot.
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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.
