Gay Talese Quotes

• It's true what they say - all the good men are married. But it's marriage that makes them good.

  Gay Talese

  Marriage, Men, Good Man

  52 Copy quote

• Listen, then make up your own mind.

  Gay Talese

  Mind

  24 Copy quote

• People dress up for funerals. Why not dress up to celebrate that you’re alive?

  Gay Talese

  People, Funeral, Dresses

  24 Copy quote

• News, if unreported, has no impact. It might as well have not happened at all

  Gay Talese

  Impact, News, Might

  Gay Talese (2013). “The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World”, p.2, Random House

  19 Copy quote

• Most journalists are restless voyeurs who see the warts on the world, the imperfections in people and places. . . . gloom is their game, the spectacle their passion, normality their nemesis.

  Gay Talese

  Passion, Games, People

  Gay Talese (2013). “The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World”, p.1, Random House

  18 Copy quote

• Journalism is a voyeuristic vocation that attracts to its employment many people who are often naturally shy and insatiably curious, and each day they are assigned to view the world with a critical eye and a detached sense of intimacy.

  Gay Talese

  Eye, Views, People

  22 Copy quote

• With all of the qualities of the scene-setting, the dialogue, the place and time and the time and place in which your characters move. And I want to move with the characters, move with them and describe the world in which they are living.

  Gay Talese

  Moving, Character, Quality

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.org. July 6, 2006.

  19 Copy quote

• Putting on a beautifully designed suit elevates my spirit, extols my sense of self, and helps define me as a man to whom details matter.

  Gay Talese

  Fashion, Men, Self

  16 Copy quote

• The real problem is what to do with problem solvers after the problem is solved.

  Gay Talese

  Inspirational, Real, Team

  9 Copy quote

• Many male habitues of massage parlors, like Talese, did not like solitary masturbation; in the parlance of the younger generation, it was a "downer." And yet to be masturbated by an appealing masseuse, to be in the physical presence of a woman with whom there was some communication and understanding, if not love, was gratifying and fun.

  Gay Talese

  Love, Fun, Communication

  14 Copy quote

• I've always had standards about writing well. There is art in this business. There is potentially great art.

  Gay Talese

  Art, Writing, Journalism

  "Lecture: Gay Talese". Bullpen: NYU Journalism, September 14, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

• The Park Avenue of poodles and polished brass; it is cab country, tip-town, glassville, a window-washer's paradise.

  Gay Talese

  Country, Poodles, Paradise

  13 Copy quote

• Unlike the millions who casually masturbate in solitude while looking at girlie pictures in Playboy and similar magazines, the massage man preferred an accomplice, an attendant lady of respectable appearance who would help him reduce the guilt and loneliness of this most lonely act of love.

  Gay Talese

  Love, Lonely, Loneliness

  Gay Talese (1981). “Thy neighbor's wife”, Dell Publishing Company

  10 Copy quote

• Sports is about people who lose and lose and lose. They lose games; then they lose their jobs. It can be very intriguing.

  Gay Talese

  Sports, Jobs, Games

  9 Copy quote

• I am a documentarian of what I do.

  Gay Talese

  6 Copy quote

• I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work.

  Gay Talese

  Writing, Thinking, Turns

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.org. July 6, 2006.

  9 Copy quote

• People go to restaurants for so many different reasons. To court a girl, to make some deal. Maybe to talk to some lawyer about how to get an alimony settlement better than they got last week.

  Gay Talese

  Girl, People, Lasts

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.org. July 6, 2006.

  11 Copy quote

• The reporter wrote with the hope that he would get a by-line in the Times, a testimony to his being alive on that day and all the tomorrows of microfilm

  Gay Talese

  Alive, Lines, Tomorrow

  Gay Talese (2013). “The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World”, p.60, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• He believed that all people existed behind varying layers of armor which, like the archaeological layers of earth itself, reflected the historical events and turbulence of a lifetime. An individual's armor that had been developed to resist pain and rejection might also block a capacity for pleasure and achievement, and feelings too deeply trapped might be released only by acts of self-destruction or harm to others. Reich was convinced that sexual deprivation and frustration motivated much of the world's chaos and warfare.

  Gay Talese

  Pain, Block, Frustration

  4 Copy quote

• I am writing about people who are alive in the city of New York during mid-20th-century America. And these people are like a character in a play or they are figures in a short story or a novel.

  Gay Talese

  New York, Character, Writing

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, themorningnews.org. July 6, 2006.

  10 Copy quote

• Restaurants are a wonderful escape for me. And are for a lot of people.

  Gay Talese

  People, Wonderful, Restaurants

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.themorningnews.org. July 6, 2006.

  5 Copy quote

• Wall Street bankers supposedly back the Yankees; Smith College girls approve of them. God, Brooks Brothers, and United States Steel are believed to be solidly in the Yankees' corner... The efficiently triumphant Yankee maching is a great institution, but, as they say, who can fall in love with U.S. Steel?

  Gay Talese

  Girl, Baseball, Brother

  "The Yankees’ Field Of Screams" By Thomas B. Edsall, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 17, 2009.

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• For example, many colleges in their writing programs teach some of my work.

  Gay Talese

  Writing, College, Example

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.themorningnews.org. July 6, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

• Even after they had stopped modeling for Playboy and had settled down with other men to raise families of their own, Hugh Hefner still considered them his women, and in the bound volumes of his magazine he would always possess them.

  Gay Talese

  Men, Magazines, Volume

  Gay Talese (1986). “Thy Neighbor's Wife”, Laurel

  13 Copy quote

• I could come up with 50 stories that I am thinking about.

  Gay Talese

  Thinking, Stories, Come Up

  Interview with Robert Birnbaum, www.themorningnews.org. July 6, 2006.

  5 Copy quote

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