Quotes from Steve Almond

the essential work of literary art: they make us more human than we were before.

If you're wondering if you're a collector, ask yourself two questions. Do I own too many records? Do my friends and family feel I own too many records? If your respective answers are No and Yes, you're a Collector.

Why are people so fascinated by how to eat Valomilks?' She said, 'Well, Dad, they're round and they're messy. But that's what makes them fun. Once we get older we're not supposed to be messy anymore. But for one moment when you're eating a Valomilk, it's okay to be messy again.

it was off to the library, where people went before God invented the Internet and

The record is not simply a storage device. Its value resides in the particular set of memories and emotional associations held by its owner. These are inseparable from the physical object, which is no longer a physical object but an article of faith.

But I come to stories in the naked hope they will fuck me up .

Boyle looked like a Monty Python in drag. Then she opened her mouth and this epic noise came ripping out of her. Within a week, she was the most celebrated person on earth, an

Styx has become the mullet of bands.

But here's a little secret, between you, me, and the rest of the mall: buying shit isn't enough. What we wish for in our secret hearts is self-expression, the chance to reveal ourselves and to be loved for this revelation, devoured by love. And thus, most of us go about our duties of commerce and leisure in a state of perpetual longing, with nocturnal excursions into the province of despair.

music came before anything else, before language and large-scale war and liquid soap, and because music is the one giant thing America has done right, amid all it has done wrong. Music, that ancient and incorruptible bitch.

Hey, Dad, check this out!" Ike stared at the boy. He clearly wanted to be down there watching his kid possibly crack his skull open, rather than recording a song about how frightened he was that his kids might crack their skulls open.

Music has become more pervasive and portable than ever. But it feels less precious in the bargain. I

Rock and roll allowed people to lie about themselves, and to be sanctified for the extravagance of their fictions. This

It's the reason we become enamored of certain singers, I think, because they project the voice we wish to summon within ourselves. His

More than any single issue, Gil's essential topic was America, how the nation had fallen away from its moral precepts and into ruin, a condition of spiritual malaise that would eventually deliver us the bigotry and psychotic greed of the Bush Era.

In practice, the Internet functions more frequently as a hive of distraction, a simulated world through which most of us flit from one context to the next . . .

In fact, I'm willing to argue at this point that we are all Drooling Fanatics, that every single human being carries within him or her the need for music and that we differ only in matters of degree and expression.

they do the essential work of literary art: they make us more human than we were before. (from the Introduction to Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed)

The stories we tell, and the ones we absorb, are what allow us to pluck meaning from the rush of experience. Only through the patient interrogation of these stories can we begin to understand where we are and how we got here.

I'm going to get hammered away for asking these questions. Fine. Hammer away. But don't pretend that's the same as answering.

I think we should use some other greeting. Something like 'what the fuck?" "Okay," I said, "What the fuck?" "Exactly. Right on. I love you.

his dick, for example, was just that. It wasn't odd or typical. It just was, by god. And isn't that nice?

attention is the first and final act act of love, and that the ultimate dwindling resource in the human arrangement isn't cheap oil or potable water or even common sense, but mercy.

There is no sin in the realm of taste.