George Plimpton Quotations

You do not cut a check in the state of Kansas to John Doe, executioner. The executioner is paid in cash so there's no trail to him

He still has the same way of calling to me, as if I'm still new to him, as if he has yet to get over me.

At the base of it was the urge, if you wanted to play football, to knock someone down, that was what the sport was all about, the will to win closely linked with contact.

Well, I have to write. A lot of people forget that. They think I’m sort of crazy baffoon who can’t make up his mind what to do in life

I remember being awed by it - the uniqueness and nicety of style - and I suspect I was a bit jealous because we were more or less of the same generation.

It is also one of the pleasures of oral biography, in that the reader, rather than editor, is jury.

My favorite monologue in the book is Kate Harrington's story of her relationship with Truman.

Rick Bass is one of the best writers of his generation.

Art has something to do with the arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

It's like people always say, Well, does sport teach you anything in life? It teaches you certain things, but it doesn't teach you other things. It doesn't teach, as I say, very much about marriage, very much about how to make a living, any of those things.