Quotes from John Gregory Dunne

The volunteer military has always been most enthusiastically, even devoutly, embraced by those who would not themselves dream of volunteering - or of encouraging their children to do so.

Reviews don't bother me.

Were it not for Jackie Robinson, Branch Rickey would be remembered, if at all, as a Bible-thumping midwestern Methodist windbag who neither played baseball on Sundays when he was a mediocre catcher for the St. Louis Browns and the New York Highlanders, nor attended games on the Sabbath as a baseball executive.

Being exposed to the enlisted Army was an eye-opener. I thought everyone was like me, but the enlisted Army is a constituency of the dispossessed.

I love cops; I'm fascinated by the criminal justice system.

For interns at 'The Weekly Standard' or 'National Review,' where the martial instinct finds its most insistent voice, what Robert Kagan calls the military 'career path' is not widely seen as a plausible future. Pulling a trigger is what Jose, Tyrone, and Bubba do, not early admission students at the better private universities.

Gavin Lambert was the first person in the movie business my wife and I met when we moved to Los Angeles in 1964.

There are no new facts about the Kennedys, only new attitudes, a literature that, like the automobile industry, puts new bodies on old chassis.

I got 'The Red White and Blue' out of journalism. It puts you in touch with the world.

A writer is an eternal outsider, his nose pressed against whatever window on the other side of which he sees his material.

Life is much more available in New York - there are a dozen movie theaters within walking distance. Living in California is easier, but you get sedentary.

'Time' was a glorious place to work in the years that I was there, from 1959 to 1964.

All life is inherently dangerous. But beyond that, Los Angeles is just a wonderful place to be.

Unlike Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, Jackie Robinson never tried to convert himself into an acceptable black man.

I call myself a harp because I like the sound of the word - it is short, sharp, and abusive.

I resist and resent the idea of California as a metaphor. It's something thrust upon us, usually by people in the East.

There are no legends about the Duponts; the legends are about Howard Hughes.

In sports, the confluence of the 1989 Oakland vs. San Francisco World Series and the Loma Prieta earthquake notwithstanding, the earth rarely moves.

Class has always been Tom Wolfe's subject, and I suspect the reason for much of the disfavor in which he is held.

No professional athlete likes to admit that he has played too long. There is too much money involved, rarely enough saved, and there is the eternal hope that age has not withered skills.

The myth of the Kennedys - and the hold - was always the hold of the renegade rich, out there on the frontier beyond accountability.

Writing is manual labor of the mind - like laying pipe.

Conspiracy is a small but durable seller, retooled every year or so.

I am willing to believe, but I do not have the gift of faith. I'm skeptical.