Publishers From The United States

"At that point I realized what was expected of me, and frankly I was ready walk out of there straight away."

"If it’s a performance you want, it’s a performance you’ll get."

"It offends me deeply."

"I despise the Vegas meets Disneyland hell-hole that it’s become."

"I thought you’d get a big kick out of this."

"A failed person who never took responsibility for her own actions, but rather blamed every ill thing that had happened in her life on the fact that she’d once briefly been in this industry."

"We’d met and we had a couple of dates sans sex and there was some chemistry and we were getting along quite well, so finally the big night arrived."

"Get it out of my system."

"I said the whole point of the women’s movement is for women to choose whatever they want to do."

"This could turn into a real test of free speech under the First Amendment."

"We in the media could help [the insurance situation] if we put in proper perspective long range hurricane forecasts that often are exaggerated and play into insurers’ hands."

"Be as nice as possible and as nasty as necessary."

"Life is a game and a gamble."

"Ideas are harder to promote than products or personalities."

"The difference between a mountain and a molehill is your perspective."

"In my book, an S.O.B. is someone who uses whatever tactics it takes to get the job done—to rise to the top."

"Eat only when you are hungry. Drink only when you’re thirsty. Sleep only when you’re tired. Screw only when you’re horny."

"Only cream and S.O.B.s rise to the top."

"Everyone should fail in a big way at least once before they’re forty. I don’t mean little disappointments, like screwing up an important assignment or quitting a good job or even getting fired from a normal job. It needs to be a big failure. You can only fail big if you take a big risk. The bigger you fail, the bigger you’re likely to succeed later."

"You have to ask yourself, What do I really want to do or be? Then make yourself this promise: I will not look over my shoulder; I will use whatever I have learned, but I will not dwell on the mistakes I have made. Whether you're seventeen, twenty-seven or sixty-seven, you bring experience to your new venture or adventure. If you draw from your own experience and use it as a guide, focus on today and not yesterday, your chances of success are greatly improved."

"The saddest people I know are those who have spent thirty or forty years working for the same employer doing something they almost like."

"I saw every day how many things can go wrong, but I also saw that somehow my mother prevailed. And she had her two sons to help her do that. When my brother was in eighth grade, he worked in a grocery store making a dollar or a dollar and a half a week. My first real job was a dollar a week in a butcher shop. Every dime or every dollar that the three of us brought in helped my mother hold this group of three people together, because her income was absolutely unpredictable. All she had when my father died was a small house that was paid for. I got to the point in grade school where I felt that I had to try anything—or everything—to succeed, and I learned to expect a lot of knocks, because I had seen my mother take them. I really think... that was my real education, what I learned at home in my early years."

"In this environment, the intellectual with the greatest freak show wins. Think of Parfrey as equal parts P.T. Barnum, Rod Serling and Hegel. The man can’t be beat when it comes to collecting outré oddities."

"I get a thrill out of being a professional pariah."

"God help me, I'm a pot-smoking libertarian."

"How, why, did I sit with some of these characters long enough to not only obtain quotes, but glean their reptilian essence? Easy. My mind was on the payoff: thousands of people receiving an antidote to the Hallmark Card reality of America. Consider this book an emetic for the soul."

"I do not try and shock people. That's never been my intent, but rather to share aspects of culture that I find interesting."

"Upsetting people is a beautiful thing, because it gets people to think beyond their last visit to 7-Eleven."

"I want people to question things—that not everything is in The New York Times, which, as they say, is "All the news that's fit to print." I wanted to include the unfit."

"I realized that if I went the grant route, my interests would have to coincide with material that was less penetrating of people's emotions. I couldn't have people saying, "Oh, God, what's that horrible thing?" I'd rather have the bottom line question be, "Will enough people buy that book?" rather than, "Will a few people in the ascendancy of academic culture be offended by it?""

"Yeah, the Jews got pissed at that magazine I sent you. None of them want to see my friend Hitler get his due... [Hitler] lifted the pride of the white people up and tried to get rid of the commies and exile the Jews where they wouldn’t hassle anyone but themselves…But of course "society" is making an “example” of Charles Manson in the same way they made an example of the Germans at Nuremburg."

"I hear that politically correct forces are hounding Irving on all ends of the earth, making it very difficult for him to earn a living. You cannot express revisionist views in public, or else you're made a pariah. You’re going against very powerful interests with big museums, big money, and a very dependent Zionist state."

"The press of this country is now, and always has been, so thoroughly dominated by the wealthy few of the country that it cannot be depended upon to give the great mass of the people that correct information concerning political, economic and social subjects which it is necessary that they shall have in order that they shall vote and in all ways act in the best way to protect themselves from the brutal force and chicanery of the ruling and employing class."

"I believe that few people aside from myself have any idea of the tremendous, the almost invincible power and force of the daily press. I am one of those who believe that at least in America the press rules the country; it rules its politics, its religion, its social practice."

"Do good to your friend to keep him, and to your enemy to make him your friend."

"I learned how easy it was for any man to do what he wanted to do, provided he really wanted to do it badly enough."

"Open to all parties, but influenced by none."

"His reputation in future time will rest, as a patriot, on the manly independence which gave through the initiatory stage and progress of the Revolution the strong influence of the press he directed toward the cause of freedom, when royal flattery would have seduced and the power of government subdued its action."

"Many people say they want to write a book but very few do it."

"And what we imagine becomes what we build."

"Nevertheless, there was merit in the manner of the man and the portent of his prognostications. His major contribution as a senator was his repeated warning about the dangers of excessive federal spending, a warning that had more substance twenty years after his retirement than it did during the prosperous post-World War II years. There are limits to what government can accomplish, dangers in long-term unbalanced budgets, and liabilities in dependence on the welfare state- for rich and poor alike. Byrd's flaw was that he did not translate these forebodings into imaginative solutions to the problems of modern society but instead fell back on old clichés and a narrow individualistic ethic that was no longer serviceable, a sterile legacy to show for thirty years of service. Harry Byrd's retirement was short-lived. A few months later, as his condition deteriorated, he was diagnosed as having an inoperable brain tumor. He spent his remaining days at Rosemont, mostly bedridden, but not without having one last small impact on Virginia politics. On the eve of his son's reelection bid, he lapsed into a coma, and out of respect for him, the campaign was halted. Days later, Harry Jr. won a narrow victory over Armistead Boothe in the Democratic primary, but Willis Robertson and Howard Smith went down to defeat. The Old Guard had passed. On October 20, 1966, Harry Flood Byrd died in the same room where his wife had died two years earlier. He was buried next to her on a hill overlooking Winchester and the Valley and mountains he loved so much."

"There are gentle men in whom gentility finally destroys whatever of iron there was in their souls. There are iron men in whom the iron corroded whatever gentility they possessed. There are men—not many to be sure—in whom the gentility and the iron were preserved in proper balance, each of these attributes to be summoned up as the occasion requires. Such a man was Harry Byrd."

"We need positive visions of how all this technology gets deployed, because what we visualize is what we build."

"At VMI integrity subconsciously becomes a way of life."

"VMI has a long and enviable tradition, of which the intrepid charge of its cadets at New Market is one of the most glorious chapters. Although only about 15 percent of the graduates pursue military careers, the mass of them have served well- many with great distinction- as citizen-soldiers in every conflict in which their country has been involved, beginning with the Mexican War. Foremost among them was General of the Army George C. Marshall, the chief of staff throughout World War II, who late served in two cabinet posts and became the one military figure ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Each of the diverse curricula in engineering, the physical sciences, and the liberal arts has prepared its cadet-students well to follow civil callings in peacetime, which most alumni do."

"In 1944, on the 25th anniversary of her association with The Nation, some 1,300 people turned out to do her honor at a testimonial dinner. Dorothy Thompson, the columnist and radio commentator, was one of a dozen speakers. She praised her friend for having fought “to throw light into dark places and to defend the peOple versus those interests that in our society have repeatedly striven to defeat the full realization of the promises of democracy.”"

"It [The Nation] is a weapon in our common fight for a democratic victory and a decent peace; against reaction, isolationism, and appeasement. We have a political war to wage and win."

"To a person who sees life in clear blacks and whites the issue is doubtless a simple one: decent people don’t associate with criminals and gangsters or try to extenuate their crimes. One cannot but envy the man who is able to dispatch his social problems so easily. But to me, as to many other non-Communists and unattached liberals, the issue is a confused and troubling one. The Communists display the qualities of most fanatics, qualities that stem as directly from Cotton Mather as from Karl Marx. They are intolerant and ruthless, often unscrupulous, often violent and lacking in political judgment. They are also zealous, brave, and willing to put up with hardship and abuse. The Communist Party and its press have “assassinated”—or tried to—many a character, including that of The Nation. But they have also fought for decent conditions for workers and the unemployed, for equality of rights for Negroes, for relief and aid to the victims of the civil war in Spain. They have stood consistently for justice and nonaggression in international relations—as, indeed, has the Soviet government as well. Neither can one forget that Communists and Communist sympathizers from the United States fought in Spain in numbers out of all proportion to their numbers here; and, it might be added, they fought side by side with Socialists and Anarchists and democrats of all shades, even while political strife between all these factions poisoned the air behind the lines. The Spanish struggle taught many lessons, of which perhaps the most important was this one: It is not necessary for liberal lambs and Communist lions to lie down together. Enough if they will move ahead toward their common objectives without wasting time and strength in an attempt to exterminate each other along the way. The job of making this country unsafe for fascism calls for tremendous constructive effort as well as defensive strength. If Communists and non-Communists and even anti-Communists could forget their mutual recriminations and concentrate on the major task of our generation, there would be better hope of its successful accomplishment."

"Logic is not a vice of the fundamentalist. He is against birth control. He detests the very words. He shrinks from the thought behind the words. Birth control can hardly be considered without considering sex, and sex should be suppressed and ignored as far as possible. If children are born, let us not dwell on the incidences of their origin; let us presume that God sent them to bless our homes, and leave the matter there. Besides, says the fundamentalist under his breath, what will become of morals if people can sin without fear?...the bigots of both faiths are right; they do well to fear the effect of a widespread knowledge of birth control methods. At present such knowledge is in the hands of the upper classes-through bootleggers-and the effect of it has been to change the habits and morals and economic status of middle-class women, and to modify almost beyond recognition the middle-class home. Some of this knowledge gets through to the poorer classes. But, like bootlegged liquor, it is apt to be poisonous-the more so, the cheaper the bootlegger. So the women of the working class are dying from the effects of drugs and abortions, when they are not dying from the effects of too many children; and a bitter, passionate clamor for fair treatment is beginning to sound through muffling layers of poverty and repression. Not for the sake of the dwindling Nordic, but for their own health and happiness and security and freedom and for their children's future, these women are going to have what they want. If you doubt it, read "Motherhood in Bondage" [by Margaret Sanger (1928)]"

"The Beats were tremendously significant, but chiefly in the way that they provided a preview in the 1950s of the cultural, intellectual, and moral disasters that would fully flower in the late 1960s. The ideas of the Beats, their sensibility, contained in ovo all the characteristics we think of as defining the cultural revolution of the Sixties and Seventies. The adolescent longing for liberation from conventional manners and intellectual standards; the polymorphous sexuality; the narcissism; the destructive absorption in drugs; the undercurrent of criminality; the irrationalism; the naive political radicalism and reflexive anti-Americanism; the adulation of pop music as a kind of spiritual weapon; the Romantic elevation of art as an alternative to rather than as an illumination of normal reality; the pseudo-spirituality, especially the spurious infatuation with Eastern religions: in all this and more the Beats provided a vivid glimpse of what was to come."