Nick Tosches Quotes

• The older you get, the more you live with ghosts.

  Nick Tosches

  Short Life, Life Is Short, Friends Come And Go

  11 Copy quote

• People speaking into handheld devices while they walk down the street and saying to the device, "I'm walking down the street now." People are enslaved. I was just up in the country for a few days last week and it was great: no television, no telephone, no nothing. I walked through the woods, sat around, smoked. And it was lovely. I think the desire to be free has mutated, and we now live in an era when the slaves celebrate their slavery - this whole corporate concept of being part of a "team" at work.

  Nick Tosches

  Country, Team, Thinking

  Source: www.esquire.com

  9 Copy quote

• Johnny Depp is, to me, a rare kindred spirit with like sensibilities, who has escaped the beast. He's probably one of the few people that have survived Los Angeles as a human being.

  Nick Tosches

  People, Spirit, Los Angeles

  7 Copy quote

• I've gone more than 40 years without having to use an alarm clock or go to an office. At this point, I don't think I'd be capable of not writing. I don't think I could deprive myself of that sky. It would be like putting an animal in a cage.

  Nick Tosches

  Writing, Animal, Thinking

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• The thing is, the more you fear death, the more you die. So it really doesn't pay off. It's a fear of the dark. Like any experience in life, you wonder, Well, if this ever happens, how would I react? and then it happens, and only then do you know.

  Nick Tosches

  Dark, Wonder, Fear Of Death

  Source: www.esquire.com

  5 Copy quote

• I think the tendency with parents is to make your kid not unlike the next kid but to overprotect and say, "My way's better than whatever you've got in mind." But by the time that tie's over that shoulder and they're drinking that obligatory brewski with the boys, it's like, Man, who are you people?

  Nick Tosches

  Drinking, Kids, Boys

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• How do I start writing a book? I sit there, I come up with an opening line, and then I go little by little. I'll wonder, Well, what's coming? And that goes right through to the very end. For over a dozen years now, I've had a recurring dream where I'm reading a book and the pages are blank, but as I read, the words come to exist as fast as my eyes can move. Strange, strange thing.

  Nick Tosches

  Dream, Moving, Book

  Source: www.esquire.com

  5 Copy quote

• They say nobody has the attention span to read great books early in life. If I start to read something good, I'll look and it's 86 pages already. Attention span. What are they talking about? If it's good, it'll drag you in.

  Nick Tosches

  Book, Attention, Great Book

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• The main event is freedom. I often wonder if I had the complete freedom to not have to write, if I would write. That's the one mystery that I hope I get to experience. It might be a good idea to retire, since as this delusion of an economy progresses, it seems that if you make ten grand a year or a hundred grand a year, there's absolutely no difference.

  Nick Tosches

  Writing, Progress, Mystery

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• My father, God bless him, thought it was such an impossible desire to be able to make a living the way I do. I was destined to go into the bar business like him or go to college and be a lawyer. I was not encouraged, and in a way maybe that made me more hardheadedly committed to being a writer.

  Nick Tosches

  Father, College, Desire

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• Steiner has here transformed the vaporous conceptions of his life, the vapors of what never was and never will be, from their aeriform state to a fine and ethereal substantiality. My Unwritten Books is a gathering of shades, an elegant and eloquent gathering of mind, feeling, and autumnal passion. (...) And that is the lovely irony of this unique little book. None of these unwritten books should have been written. They are better here, as they are, untamed and errant phantoms of a brilliance whose emanations no one mortal lifetime could ever accommodate in full.

  Nick Tosches

  Book, Passion, Unique

  6 Copy quote

• I think Elvis Presley will never be solved

  Nick Tosches

  Thinking

  Nick Tosches (2009). “Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock 'n' Roll”, p.41, Da Capo Press

  4 Copy quote

• The difference of human being behind the guy on the page is in writing, I'm no longer conscious of personal repercussions because for that moment they don't exist. At times, I tell myself, Well, I can always go back and change that or take it out, and I find out that I rarely do. Couple little things here and there: Do unto others. Be a good scout. With all the ironies that entails, I go by that. That's a good way to live.

  Nick Tosches

  Couple, Writing, Guy

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• The things I wanted to be when I was a kid were an archeologist, because of dinosaur bones; a garbage man, because they got to ride on the side of the trucks; and a writer.

  Nick Tosches

  Kids, Men, Dinosaurs

  4 Copy quote

• You're never gonna outwrite the movement of the white clouds and the blue sky. You're never going to. There are times when I try to write beautifully, but I don't know if I'm trying to exorcise my own demons. If I am, there are other ones lurking beneath, because they keep coming out. Maybe little by little I'm fumigating.

  Nick Tosches

  Writing, Trying, Demon

  Source: www.esquire.com

  5 Copy quote

• You see, I needed to go to Hell.

  Nick Tosches

  Hell, Needed, Go To Hell

  6 Copy quote

• The appeal for drugs has dwindled. Except for actual opium. If I could get real opium, I'd stir it in my hot coffee every morning. People keep giving me marijuana. I've got pouches in a drawer. I've been meaning to smoke a joint and watch Abbott and Costello Go to Mars. I planned to do this three months ago and I still haven't gotten around to it.

  Nick Tosches

  Morning, Real, Coffee

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• Joe Bonomo has written a fine book: a book not only about a band or times passed, but also about the rare virtue of endurance.

  Nick Tosches

  Book, Endurance, Band

  4 Copy quote

• You got guys that are so old, you see them eating lunch, the drool's just coming from their mouth, and they're sending around memos about 10 percent crosscuts. If I had one tenth of their money, I would be free. They don't know what freedom is. It's a disease. You're one of the rare people that is given freedom, and what do you do with it? You don't live. You choose to be dead in life. Money buys freedom. I mean why is this guy with the slobber worried about taking food off other people's tables? His $19 billion won't get him from where he is to the grave comfortably? That to me is a disease.

  Nick Tosches

  Mean, People, Guy

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• My most recent novel didn't start out scaring me, but as I got deeper into writing it, it scared me. It's not so much where the story's going. It's where it came from. I always come out of it thinking, Okay, that got it all outta me. The next one's gonna be nice and simple, and it's not gonna scare me, and that never seems to happen.

  Nick Tosches

  Nice, Writing, Simple

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• We're finite creatures, doomed to never get a fraction of what wisdom it would take to deal with infinity. My book has a lot to do with the unbelievable power and beauty of that almost unattainable freedom. Since none of us really gets to know it, we don't know what extremely powerful dangers might lurk in it.

  Nick Tosches

  Powerful, Book, Danger

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• People think they're gonna make a living off poetry. Ten years ago, maybe a couple of people did. Right now, no one, I don't think.

  Nick Tosches

  Couple, Thinking, People

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• I don't have a college degree.

  Nick Tosches

  College, Degrees, College Degree

  Interview with Scott Raab, www.esquire.com. December 13, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

• I wanted to just get a job so I could have enough money for my own apartment and be able to get drunk. And I did. Back then, on $125, you could do that in Manhattan. I was 19 years old the first time I got published and paid. I think it was a hundred bucks. I stared at my name on the check for 20 minutes.

  Nick Tosches

  Thinking, Drunk, Enough

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

• For years, I never really pondered how I came to be a writer from where I came from.

  Nick Tosches

  Years

  4 Copy quote

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