Steve Almond Quotes

Quotes about:

• We need books...because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.

  Steve Almond

  Wise, True Friend, Book

  45 Copy quote

• Something is funny, most of all, because it's true, and because the velocity of insight into this truth exceeds our normal standards. Something is funny because it's outside our accepted boundary of decorum. Something is funny because it defies our expectations. Something is funny because it offers a temporary reprieve from the hardship of seeing the world as it actually is. Something is funny because it is able to suggest gently that even the worst of our circumstances and sins is subject to eventual mercy.

  Steve Almond

  Expectations, Velocity, Able

  17 Copy quote

• At the end of night, before you close your eyes, be content with what you've done and be proud of who you are.

  Steve Almond

  Eye, Night, Done

  10 Copy quote

• Football is the most successful cult, in terms of members and profits, in human history. Oh wait, there's also religion.

  Steve Almond

  Football, Successful, Waiting

  Source: therumpus.net

  3 Copy quote

• We are all, in the private kingdom of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend. Someone who isn’t embarrassed by our emotions, or her own, who recognizes that life is short and all that we have to offer, in the end, is love.

  Steve Almond

  Wise, True Friend, Heart

  9 Copy quote

• All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.

  Steve Almond

  Lying, Reading, Writing

  62 Copy quote

• Every now and then, I'll run into someone who claims not to like chocolate, and while we live in a country where everyone has the right to eat what they want, I want to say for the record that I don't trust these people, that I think something is wrong with them, and that they're probably - and this must be said - total duds in bed.

  Steve Almond

  Running, Country, Thinking

  11 Copy quote

• I want to view my own efforts to write a novel as a function of my own artistic aspirations rather than a good career move. And I need to learn how to commit to characters for a longer time, to confront the limits of my own capacities for attention and compassion. That's what a writing career does, in the best instance: it allows you to keep after what you can't do.

  Steve Almond

  Moving, Writing, Character

  Source: www.popmatters.com

  3 Copy quote

• Nothing on Earth is so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night.

  Steve Almond

  Beautiful, Halloween, Night

  Steve Almond (2004). “Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America”, p.32, Algonquin Books

  13 Copy quote

• The single biggest reason I got my stories taken in various literary magazines - and I want to stress this - is because I refused to give up. Period.

  Steve Almond

  Giving Up, Stress, Taken

  4 Copy quote

• The truth is, every sport has been turned into a huge, nihilistic business.

  Steve Almond

  Sports, Truth Is, Has Beens

  Source: therumpus.net

  3 Copy quote

• I happen to love football so much and hate myself for loving it.

  Steve Almond

  Football, Hate, Hate Myself

  Source: therumpus.net

  3 Copy quote

• To look at the work of your peers, and learn how to explain with kindness and precision, the nature of their mistakes is, in fact, how you learn to diagnose your own work.

  Steve Almond

  Kindness, Mistake, Peers

  3 Copy quote

• But the real life of a writer resides in showing up at the keyboard every day, with the necessary patience and mercy, and making the best decisions you can on behalf of your people. It’s a slow process. It often feels hopeless, more like an affliction than an art form. Most of us will have to find our readers one by one, in other words, and against considerable resistance. If anything qualifies us as heroic, it’s that private perpetual struggle. Put down the magazine, soldier. Forget about the other guy. Remember who you are.

  Steve Almond

  Art, Real, Struggle

  "The New Yorker’s One Over 40" by Steve Almond, therumpus.net. June 14, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

• There's something incredibly liberating about a holiday that encourages children to take candy from strangers

  Steve Almond

  Children, Holiday, Stranger

  Steve Almond (2004). “Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America”, p.30, Algonquin Books

  3 Copy quote

• Even a hundred and fifty years ago, football was popular because it provided a manly spectacle that lots of men needed, after the industrial revolution. We went from a culture that lived out doors and expanded the frontier and fought the Indians to a bunch of guys in offices. So football provided this jolt, a kind of exalted cult of masculinity. And it still does that. Perhaps even more so today.

  Steve Almond

  Football, Men, Doors

  Source: therumpus.net

  3 Copy quote

• A good teacher, after all, wields the authority of a parent with none of the psychological baggage. The best of them are semi-mysterious figures whose wisdom seems boundless and whose approval helps us discover who we are.

  Steve Almond

  Teacher, Parent, Who We Are

  6 Copy quote

• But something occurred to me as I sped through that dirty shroud of fog, something Vonnegut has been trying to explain to the rest of us for most of his life. And that is this: Despair is a form of hope. It is an acknowledgment of the distance between ourselves and our appointed happiness. At certain moments, it is reason enough to live.

  Steve Almond

  Distance, Dirty, Fog

  Steve Almond (2007). “(Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions”, p.33, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• There's an invisible army of woman and men who really don't get why we give so much of ourselves to football. And they need to SPEAK UP.

  Steve Almond

  Football, Army, Men

  Source: therumpus.net

  3 Copy quote

• Football offers us a sanitized spectacle of combat that has a clear resolution, which we need more and more today given our incoherent overseas "wars."

  Steve Almond

  Football, War, Needs

  Source: therumpus.net

  3 Copy quote

• Most forms of rage, after all, are only sloppy cloaks for grief.

  Steve Almond

  Grief, Rage, Form

  Steve Almond (2004). “Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America”, p.198, Algonquin Books

  3 Copy quote

• Art arises from loss. I wish this weren't the case. I wish that every time I met a new woman and she rocked my world, I was inspired to write my ass off. But that is not what happens. What happens is we lie around in bed eating chocolate and screwing. Art is what happens when things don't work out, when you're licking your wounds. Art is, to a larger extent than people would like to think, a productive licking of the wounds.

  Steve Almond

  Art, Lying, Writing

  Steve Almond (2004). “Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America”, p.38, Algonquin Books

  6 Copy quote

• The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.

  Steve Almond

  Life, Answers, Freak

  Steve Almond (2004). “Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America”, p.9, Algonquin Books

  6 Copy quote

• At about the age of ten, during a late summer visit to Sears to buy school clothes, I became aware of the concept of candy by the pound.

  Steve Almond

  Summer, School, Clothes

  Steve Almond (2004). “Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America”, p.21, Algonquin Books

  6 Copy quote

• Misery loves another idiot with a jukebox where his soul should be.

  Steve Almond

  Soul, Jukebox, Misery

  Steve Almond (2010). “Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life: A Book by and for the Fanatics Among Us”, p.6, Random House

  21 Copy quote

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