Melvin Maddocks Quotations

Watching baseball under the lights is like observing dogs indoors, at a pedigree show. In both instances, the environment is too controlled to suit the species.

Giving jazz the Congressional seal of approval is a little like making Huck Finn an honorary Boy Scout.

Journalists do not like to report on uncertainties. They would almost rather be wrong than ambiguous.

It is one test of a fully developed writer that he reminds us of no one but himself.

It is beyond the imagination of the menu-maker that there are people in the world who breakfast on a single egg.

Writing is the most demanding of callings, more harrowing than a warrior's, more lonely than a whaling captain's-that, in essence, is the modern writer's message.

To choose art means to turn one's back on the world, or at least on certain of its distractions.

Once we thought, journalists and readers alike, that if we put together enough 'facts' and gave them a fast stir, we would come up with something that, at least by the standards of short-order cooks, could be called the truth.

Once we thought, journalists and readers alike, that if we put together enough ""facts"" and gave them a fast stir, we would come up with something that, at least by the standards of short-order cooks, could be called the truth.

A man's work is his dilemma: his job is his bondage, but it also gives him a fair share of his identity and keeps him from being a bystander in somebody else's world.

Nothing is more idealistic than a journalist on the defensive.

Cary Grant, born Archie Leach, was a poor boy who could barely spell posh. That's acting for you-or maybe Hollywood.