Latest James Purdy Quotes from Interviews

• I think fame is something that you've achieved in your inner self that becomes known to others outside you. There are really very few famous people in history.

  James Purdy

  Thinking, Self, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I've never been in fashion. Not at all.

  James Purdy

  Fashion

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I don't have any home. Everyone I grew up with, my family, are all dead. So I feel kind of like a ghost. I'm more interested in the past.

  James Purdy

  Home, Past, Ghost

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There's the world of the newspapers. They believe that what is happening is happening, which is so naïve. Because they're the first to turn on that.

  James Purdy

  Believe, World, Firsts

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• If you're a writer, you have to be an egomaniac. You have to just believe in yourself, which is hard work.

  James Purdy

  Believe, Hard Work, Egomaniacs

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The world is telling you through The New York Times and The New York Review of Books "You must shut up. You must never appear again. Because you are not relevant to us." So you have to fight their attempt to destroy you, fight to continue feeling.

  James Purdy

  New York, Book, Fighting

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There's really nothing wrong with sentimentality... Nothing I wrote is sentimental.

  James Purdy

  Sentimental, Sentimentality

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Margaret Meade is always running around saying that marijuana's just like bread and water! Well, bread and water are poison, and marijuana's a poison. Now, if you like poison, why shouldn't you have it? But don't try to pretend that it's innocuous.

  James Purdy

  Running, Marijuana, Water

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Actually, television tells you to take dope. It tells you to destroy the human race really, by first having more consumers and then consuming more poison and then making the whole planet uninhabitable.

  James Purdy

  Dope, Race, Poison

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I wish people would call poisons poison. I don't mind people smoking marijuana, but they should admit it's a poison, and coffee's a poison, but the Americans lie so.

  James Purdy

  Lying, Coffee, Marijuana

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I am against all machines. It's no wonder that so many Americans go on dope when they have no other cultural stimulus than a television.

  James Purdy

  Dope, Machines, Goes On

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• There are no manners left in America at all, because all you're doing is kicking the person next to you so that you can consume more, see more, and get more.

  James Purdy

  America, Kicking, Next

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I think America, really, is over.

  James Purdy

  Thinking, America

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I don't think it's like eastern mysticism, which leaves the person whole. It's really another form of cancer, television.

  James Purdy

  Cancer, Thinking, Television

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Television masturbates its audience even though the audience is not really watching. It masturbates orifices the audience doesn't have. It sticks holes in the viewer and masturbates in those holes. Then it finally gets into the brain and masturbates there, too.

  James Purdy

  Brain, Television, Sticks

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Almost everything official in America is a huge fraud.

  James Purdy

  America, Fraud, Huge

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• No one looks at a television, and no one hears it. It's a poison.

  James Purdy

  Poison, Looks, Television

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• None of my books are best-sellers. In fact, the only thing that's kept me alive is the books that are in paperback. People find them, they like them, and they pass them on.

  James Purdy

  Book, People, Alive

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• As always, I wonder if I'll get through the winter. Then when winter is over, I wonder about the summer. But that's because the system decided which author shall be commercially successful. As I said, the most vicious of them all is The New York Times, because it pretends to be literary and impartial, and it's really this opinionated, myopic, stupid giant of incompetence.

  James Purdy

  Summer, New York, Stupid

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Feeling is taboo, especially in New York. I read in some little magazine the other day that The New Yorker and The New York Times were sclerotic, meaning, "completely turned to rock." The critics here are that way.

  James Purdy

  New York, Rocks, Feelings

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Publishers seem to be in an alcoholic haze most of the time. Well, the publishers have no idea what a writer is.

  James Purdy

  Ideas, Haze, Wells

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The public is totally illiterate in America. It can't read at all. It's absolutely insensitive to words.

  James Purdy

  America, Insensitive, Illiterate

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• The New York Times is the worst newspaper in the world and it's extremely vicious to artists.

  James Purdy

  New York, Artist, World

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• Most journalists are broken down alcoholics.

  James Purdy

  Broken, Journalist, Broken Down

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• New York establishment isn't really a literary establishment. It's just a collection of broken down old newspaper hacks who pass judgment on books that they have not even read, with assuredness of Jehova.

  James Purdy

  New York, Book, Broken

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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