E. P. Thompson Quotes

I guess I'm just courtly until people get in my way. You'll find most Southerners are like that.

Given my calling I had to stumble across people who felt the same way. I was a young reporter.

I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don't mind admitting any of them.

I couldn't imagine, and I don't say this with any pride, but I really couldn't imagine writing without a desperate deadline.

Las Vegas makes Reno seem like your friendly neighborhood grocery store.

A little bit of this town goes a very long way. After five days in Vegas you feel like you've been here for five years.

Allen [ Ginsberg] was a particular friend, one of my heroes, really. I knew him almost as long as I've been writing.

I don't think that my kind of journalism has ever been universally popular. It's lonely out here.

I'd almost prefer [Richard] Nixon. I'd say [Bill] Clinton is every bit as corrupt as Nixon, but a lot smoother.

There may be flies on you and me, but there are no flies on Jesus.

Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these photographs did.

Hit him again, Jack! He's crazy!

Jim Harrison is someone I always enjoy, one of the great contemporary writers. I like Tim Ferris' Big Boom Theory. I'm getting into a different kind of reading, not straight novels.

Quacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent?

There was no time for scholarly details, and, besides, I have always believed that a man can fairly be judged by the standards and taste of his choices in matters of high-level plagiarism.

I've already become a mastodon in print - I don't see a consciousness for my kind of journalism.

I was 22 when JFK was murdered, and I will never recover from it... Never.

I measure my life in pages. If I have pages at dawn, it's been a good night.

You took too much man, too much, too much.

Richard Nixon looks like a flaming liberal today, compared to a golem like George Bush. Indeed. Where is Richard Nixon now that we finally need him?

We must have football. What would this country be without football in October?

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, but I will not make that mistake again. The joke is over for Nader. He was funny once, but now he belongs to the dead.

Crack is ruining the drug culture.

I can't think in terms of journalism without thinking in terms of political ends. Unless there's been a reaction, there's been no journalism. It's cause and effect.

The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise.

it's 12 amyl nitrites (one box), in conjunction with as many beers as necessary.

and he would probably not agree with my conviction that a sense of humor is the main measure of sanity. But who can say for sure? Humor is a very private thing.

I have always hated bowling, and I don't mind admitting it.

I had a soft-spot in my heart for Ronald Reagan, if only because he was a sportswriter in his youth.

We came down here to see this teddible scene: people all pissed out of their minds and vomiting on themselves and all that and now, you know what? It's us

and the sad notes floated out to the patio and hung in the trees like birds too tired to fly

A man never stoops so low as when he rises to the challenge of politics.

The Sixties were an era of extreme reality. I miss the smell of tear gas. I miss the fear of getting beaten.

I guess that's one of the things about growing up in the fifties - it never occurred to me that you wouldn't be at least as successful as your parents.

I was kind of relieved with the way the book [The Proud Highway] came out. It's beyond an autobiography or a biography. I never knew what was going to come up next.

By the time I got to high school I knew what I was gonna do. Mainly because I looked around and saw there wasn't much else I was able to do. I was a criminal. I was a juvenile delinquent.

Las Vegas is the savage heart of the American Dream.

Sometimes you're fooled quickly. You want to be fooled. If you can't trust your first impression you're going to have a harder time than you should.

Sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks.

Nixon was a bad loser. He hated losing worse than death, and that is why I enjoyed him. We were both football fans, both addicts; and on some days, nothing else mattered.

I may sound a little black, but I'm really pretty well adjusted.

Richard Nixon was a criminally insane Monster - Bill Clinton is a black-hearted Swine of a friend.

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president.

I have long admired Ron Whitehead. He is crazy as nine loons, and his poetry is a dazzling mix of folk wisdom and pure mathematics

Nixon was a crook, of course, but he was also a rabid football fan - and he knew the game, which still astounds me, but I have always had a soft spot for him because of it.

I feel trapped if I know I can't kill myself at anytime

I keep my mouth shut now. I've turned into a professional coward.

You almost have to be a rock star to generate the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.

I think I'm going to have to get a flying license very soon, and maybe one of those Lear jets. It beats motorcycles all to hell.

There's no point in getting into politics at all unless you plan to lash things around.