William Lewis Trogdon (William Least Heat-Moon) Quotes
The hotel was once where things coalesced, where you could meet both townspeople and travelers. Not so in a motel. No matter how you build it, the motel remains the haunt of the quick and dirty, where the only locals are Chamber of Commerce boys every fourth Thursday. Who ever heard the returning traveler exclaim over one of the great motels of the world he stayed in? Motels can be big, but never grand.
Quotes to Explore
-
My brothers and I would sit out on the park bench and harmonize.
-
My work was entirely nonfiction.
-
You have no power at all if you do not exercise constant power.
-
Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men.
-
Devo and The Cramps didn't get big until they went to New York City. Chrissie Hynde didn't get big until she moved to London. When I was growing up, there wasn't even a place to play - just one little bar. If we wanted to have a gig, then we had to drive 45 minutes up to Cleveland.
-
Show me an Irishman who can't tell a story – I don't think they exist.
-
I don't know how to make Harper and Alloy want me, not just my name.
-
As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.
-
I studied the lives of jazz singers who would tour Europe, and... what I learned was life was big ride for them. They'd seen the dark side of humanity... but touring the world playing jazz, it was a truly carefree way of living. A great escapism, if you like.
-
I recently went to New York for the first time, and honey, I'm in love with that place. I'm obsessed with its sausages.
-
There are epic downsides to living a somewhat public life. The upshot of that is there's nothing to hide. It's a relief in a way. There's nothing about me that can't be said.
-
There's this perception sometimes around here that I'm this Hollywood guy.
-
It is a myth of publishers that people want to read easy things.
-
I was trying to manage school and training for the Olympics and ended up not doing well at either. That was a big lesson in my life. My mother expected both.
-
I think that, as a white person stepping into doing any sort of anti-systematic-racism type of work, asking yourself, 'What is your intention?' needs to happen on a consistent basis. Check yourself. Check yourself. Check yourself, like, constantly.
-
Since belief determines behavior, doesn't it make sense that we should be teaching ethical, moral values in every home and in every school in America?
-
What is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past.
-
To hear of a thousand deaths in war is terrible, and we 'know' that it is. But as it registers on our hearts, it is not more terrible than one death fully imagined.
-
The thought of somebody pulling and cutting around my face gives me stomach ache. Plastic surgery would be so painful. What if it doesn't look good? What if they made a mistake? I couldn't do it.
-
I had a very, very difficult relationship with my mother, who was supremely self-centred. She was hilariously self-centred. She did not really take interest in anything that didn't immediately affect her.
-
That which is so universal as death must be a benefit.
-
My father played guitar, so I always wanted to play for that reason. But I think the biggest reason was just the '90s in general - growing up listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and bands like that, and going to concerts and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world.
-
China became the second biggest economy in the world by pegging their currency to the dollar at an artificially cheap rate.
-
The hotel was once where things coalesced, where you could meet both townspeople and travelers. Not so in a motel. No matter how you build it, the motel remains the haunt of the quick and dirty, where the only locals are Chamber of Commerce boys every fourth Thursday. Who ever heard the returning traveler exclaim over one of the great motels of the world he stayed in? Motels can be big, but never grand.
