Latest James Wolcott Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• People want somebody to be a daredevil, even if they're not going to be a daredevil themselves.

  James Wolcott

  People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The Internet and blogging made writing somewhat more solitary and more splintered. It removes the whole sense of the magazine as an organism. A certain dynamism. At The Village Voice, there were all these fevers inside the offices, that would break out into full-scale rumbles between writers. The New Yorker used to be notorious for everything that went on, sexual intrigues and people had individual offices, they could close the door and take a bottle out of their bottom drawer or have sex on their desk.

  James Wolcott

  Writing, People, Office

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I think ambition is a desire for recognition. People want to be special. I think ambition can take in a whole package of things, power or sexual excitement.

  James Wolcott

  Ambition, Thinking, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The whole ecosystem of celebrity has broken down for writers. If you go back to the '50s, '60s, and '70s, writers were on TV a lot, and they were allowed to misbehave a lot. Truman Capote was a pop figure, but it wasn't until he went on David Susskind's show and had that extraordinary voice and manner that everyone could imitate, that he really took off as a figure. Norman Mailer and Vidal, the same thing. The bestselling writers now, there's no great animal energy with them.

  James Wolcott

  Animal, Broken, Energy

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I remember reading about police arresting this filmmaker making this freaky movie and his name was John Waters. And I was like, wow, someone in Baltimore is doing something creative? I didn't know there were people running off and making eight-millimeter movies. Then I got to New York and realized, oh, there's a whole world of people who do these things. I was utterly bored being in the suburbs, but I didn't know why I was bored.

  James Wolcott

  Running, Reading, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I've always stayed on the periphery of things. When I used to go to the punk clubs and things like that, I was never up front. I always wanted to be in the back, or on the side, because I wanted to get the whole view, rather than be staring up at someone's nostrils.

  James Wolcott

  Views, Clubs, Sides

  Source: www.vanityfair.com

• I understand the people-watching, but I've never done it where people have to race to three different shows, from here to there. I mean, the biggest zoo I ever faced was Comic Con, and Comic Con takes place in one big hangar.

  James Wolcott

  Zoos, Mean, Race

  Source: www.vanityfair.com

• One of the mistakes they often make is the designers over-accessorize or over-elaborate. So you realize: this would work if they removed X and Y. And actually, that's the sort of thing that translates into writing, because a lot of the time you realize, I feel I need to add something here but actually what I need to do is subtract. And then there's always the psychodrama and the tears and the rage and the feuds.

  James Wolcott

  Mistake, Writing, Tears

  Source: www.vanityfair.com