Gay Talese Quotations

Better that you should take the chance of trying something that is close to your heart, you think is what you want to write, and if they do not publish it, put it in your drawer. But maybe another day will come and you will find a place to put that.

The real problem is what to do with the problem-solvers after the problems are solved.

Even after they had stopped modeling for Playboy and had settled down with other men to raise families of their own, Hugh Hefner still considered them his women, and in the bound volumes of his magazine he would always possess them.

News, if unreported, has no impact. It might as well have not happened at all

The reporter wrote with the hope that he would get a by-line in the Times, a testimony to his being alive on that day and all the tomorrows of microfilm

Yes there is a little group of soccer aficionados, but I am not one of them.

People go to restaurants for so many different reasons. To court a girl, to make some deal. Maybe to talk to some lawyer about how to get an alimony settlement better than they got last week.

I could come up with 50 stories that I am thinking about

I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work

I am writing about people who are alive in the city of New York during mid-20th-century America. And these people are like a character in a play or they are figures in a short story or a novel

For example, many colleges in their writing programs teach some of my work

Thirteen years I took on this last book.

With all of the qualities of the scene-setting, the dialogue, the place and time and the time and place in which your characters move. And I want to move with the characters, move with them and describe the world in which they are living.

Restaurants are a wonderful escape for me. And are for a lot of people

Nonfiction takes no liberty with the facts. The trouble with book publishers is that they don't have the staff or they don't want to have the staff to ensure the veracity of a writer. ... My wife is going to hate me for this, but that is what I believe.

He was a true showman. He had not only the talent, but he had the ability to promote that talent. That's one reason why I think he's still relevant after all these years.

He was a sex junkie with an insatiable habit.

I write non-fiction, and he didn't influence me. He was one of the great writers, but I don't know that he influenced a generation.

You're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you. ... A condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs. It'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.

Wall Street bankers supposedly back the Yankees; Smith College girls approve of them. God, Brooks Brothers, and United States Steel are believed to be solidly in the Yankees' corner... The efficiently triumphant Yankee maching is a great institution, but, as they say, who can fall in love with U.S. Steel?

He believed that all people existed behind varying layers of armor which, like the archaeological layers of earth itself, reflected the historical events and turbulence of a lifetime. An individual's armor that had been developed to resist pain and rejection might also block a capacity for pleasure and achievement, and feelings too deeply trapped might be released only by acts of self-destruction or harm to others. Reich was convinced that sexual deprivation and frustration motivated much of the world's chaos and warfare.

I've always had standards about writing well. There is art in this business. There is potentially great art.

The real problem is what to do with problem solvers after the problem is solved.

I am a documentarian of what I do.

The Park Avenue of poodles and polished brass; it is cab country, tip-town, glassville, a window-washer's paradise.

Many male habitues of massage parlors, like Talese, did not like solitary masturbation; in the parlance of the younger generation, it was a "downer." And yet to be masturbated by an appealing masseuse, to be in the physical presence of a woman with whom there was some communication and understanding, if not love, was gratifying and fun.

Sports is about people who lose and lose and lose. They lose games; then they lose their jobs. It can be very intriguing.

Most journalists are restless voyeurs who see the warts on the world, the imperfections in people and places. . . . gloom is their game, the spectacle their passion, normality their nemesis.

Unlike the millions who casually masturbate in solitude while looking at girlie pictures in Playboy and similar magazines, the massage man preferred an accomplice, an attendant lady of respectable appearance who would help him reduce the guilt and loneliness of this most lonely act of love.

Putting on a beautifully designed suit elevates my spirit, extols my sense of self, and helps define me as a man to whom details matter.

Journalism is a voyeuristic vocation that attracts to its employment many people who are often naturally shy and insatiably curious, and each day they are assigned to view the world with a critical eye and a detached sense of intimacy.

Listen, then make up your own mind.

People dress up for funerals. Why not dress up to celebrate that you’re alive?

It's true what they say - all the good men are married. But it's marriage that makes them good.