Tom Wolfe Quotes - Page 2

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• There are some people who have the quality of richness and joy in them and they communicate it to everything they touch. It is first of all a physical quality; then it is a quality of the spirit.

  Tom Wolfe

  People, Joy, Quality

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• The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.

  Tom Wolfe

  Art, Romantic Love, Games

  Tom Wolfe (2008). “The Painted Word”, p.24, Macmillan

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• I went to see the Beatles last month... And I heard 20,000 girls screaming together at the Beatles... and I couldn't hear what they were screaming, either... But you don't have to... They're screaming Me! Me! Me! Me!... I'm Me!... That's the cry of the ego, and that's the cry of this rally!... Me! Me! Me! Me!... And that's why wars get fought... ego... because enough people want to scream Pay attention to Me... Yep, you're playing their game.

  Tom Wolfe

  Girl, War, Games

  Tom Wolfe (1999). “The electric kool-aid acid test”, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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• People complain about my exclamation points, but I honestly think that's the way people think. I don't think people think in essays; it's one exclamation point to another.

  Tom Wolfe

  Thinking, Exclamation Points, People

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• it is either make this thing permanent inside of you or forever just climb draggled up into the conning tower every time for one short glimpse of the horizon.

  Tom Wolfe

  Forever, Glimpse, Towers

  Tom Wolfe (2008). “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, p.375, Macmillan

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• Frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can't see a painting.

  Tom Wolfe

  Painting, These Days, Theory

  Tom Wolfe (2008). “The Painted Word”, p.104, Macmillan

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• His hair has the long jesuschrist look. He is wearing the costume clothes. But most of all, he now has a very tolerant and therefore withering attitude toward all those who are still struggling in the old activist political ways...while he, with the help of psychedelic chemicals, is exploring the infinite regions of human consciousness.

  Tom Wolfe

  Attitude, Hippie, Struggle

  17 Copy quote

• I do novels a bit backward. I look for a situation, a milieu first, and then I wait to see who walks into it.

  Tom Wolfe

  Waiting, Looks, Firsts

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• My entire career, in fiction or nonfiction, I have reported and written about people who are not like me.

  Tom Wolfe

  Careers, People, Fiction

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• don't just describe an emotion, arouse it, make them experience it, by manipulating the symbol of the emotion, and sometimes we have to come into awareness through the back door.

  Tom Wolfe

  Doors, Emotion, Sometimes

  Tom Wolfe (2008). “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, p.214, Macmillan

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• It's fortunate that I am a writer, because that has helped me understand the properties of words. They are what have made life complex. In the battle for status in the animal kingdom, power and aggressiveness have been all-important. But among humans, once they acquired speech, all that changed.

  Tom Wolfe

  Animal, Important, Battle

  "Tom Wolfe on How Speech Made Us Human". Interview with Steve Heilig, www.sfgate.com. March 16, 2008.

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• You can be denounced from the heavens, and it only makes people interested.

  Tom Wolfe

  People, Heaven

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• The attitude is we live and let live. This is actually an amazing change in values in a rather short time and it's an example of freedom from religion.

  Tom Wolfe

  Attitude, Hippie, Atheism

  25 Copy quote

• (W)hat I write when I force myself is generally just as good as what I write when I'm feeling inspired. It's mainly a matter of forcing yourself to write.

  Tom Wolfe

  Writing, Feelings, Matter

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• I was sitting in my office when someone called to tell me two light planes had collided with the World Trade Centre. I turned on my television, before long there was this procession of people of all kinds, walking up the street. What I remember most was the silence of that crowd; there was no sound.

  Tom Wolfe

  Light, Two, Long

  "The liberal elite hasn't got a clue". Interview with Ed Vulliamy, www.theguardian.com. November 1, 2004.

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• The first newspaper I worked on was the 'Springfield Union' in Springfield, Massachusetts. I wrote over a hundred letters to newspapers asking for work and got three responses, two no's.

  Tom Wolfe

  Two, Three, Massachusetts

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• My father was the editor of an agricultural magazine called 'The Southern Planter.' He didn't think of himself as a writer. He was a scientist, an agronomist, but I thought of him as a writer because I'd seen him working at his desk. I just assumed that I was going to do that, that I was going to be a writer.

  Tom Wolfe

  Father, Thinking, Editors

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• Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later.

  Tom Wolfe

  Inspirational, Fathers Day, Dad

  Tom Wolfe (2002). “The Bonfire of the Vanities: A Novel”, p.446, Macmillan

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• I'm a great believer in outlines.

  Tom Wolfe

  Believer, Outlines

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• America is a wonderful country! I mean it! No honest writer would challenge that statement! The human comedy never runs out of material! it never lets you down!

  Tom Wolfe

  Running, Country, Mean

  Tom Wolfe (2010). “Hooking Up”, p.60, Macmillan

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• The 'New York Honk,' as it was called, was the most fashionable accent an American male could have at that time, namely, the spring of 1963. One achieved it by forcing all words out through the nostrils rather than the mouth. It was at once virile... and utterly affected. Nelson Rockefeller had a New York Honk.

  Tom Wolfe

  New York, Spring, Males

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• They were...well, Beautiful People! - not 'students', 'clerks', 'salesgirls', 'executive trainees' - Christ, don't give me your occupation-game labels! We are Beautiful People, ascendant from your robot junkyard.

  Tom Wolfe

  Beautiful, Games, People

  Tom Wolfe (2008). “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test”, p.155, Macmillan

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• Vietnam was really an idealistic thing to stop the spread of communism, which, incidentally, it did. It was a pretty costly way to do it, but it achieved its goal.

  Tom Wolfe

  Goal, Vietnam, Way

  "Dances with Wolfe" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. January 20, 2008.

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• On Wall Street he and a few others - how many? three hundred, four hundred, five hundred? had become precisely that... Masters of the Universe.

  Tom Wolfe

  Wall, Business, Three

  The Bonfire of the Vanities ch. 1 (1987). Ellipsis in the original.Wolfe took the phrase "Masters of the Universe" from a name used in the early 1980s for action figures by the Mattel toy company and in a related television cartoon show.

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• Radical Chic, after all, is only radical in Style; in its heart it is part of Society and its traditions.

  Tom Wolfe

  Heart, Style, Tradition

  Tom Wolfe (2010). “Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers”, p.79, Macmillan

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