Quotes from Joseph Mitchell

My dad was a cotton buyer and cotton buyers always considered themselves superior to the rest of the world.

All information of a spiritual or personal nature will have to come from our father, who art in heaven, and I think he's in New York right now.

Also, I had not yet found out about time; I was still under the illusion that I had plenty of time - time for this, time for that, time for everything, time to waste.

you can hate a place with all your heart and soul and still be homesick for it.

Also, I had not yet found out about time; I was still under the illusion that I had plenty of time - time for this, time for that, time for everything, time to waste.

He had a habit of remarking to bartenders that he didn't see any sense in mixing whiskey with water since the whiskey was already wet.

All information of a spiritual or personal nature will have to come from our father, who art in heaven, and I think he's in New York right now.

When things get too much for me, I put a wild-flower book and a couple of sandwiches in my pockets and go down to the South Shore of Staten Island and wander around awhile in one of the old cemeteries down there. (Mr Hunter's Grave, 1956)

Life is a goddam mess...but you wouldn't want to miss it!

Gould is a night wanderer, and he has put down descriptions of dreadful things he has seen on dark New York streets – descriptions, for example, of the herds of big gray rats that come out in the hours before dawn in some neighborhoods of the lower East Side and Harlem and unconcernedly walk the sidewalks. 'I sometimes believe that these rats are not rats at all,' he says, 'but the damned and aching souls of tenement landlords.

it takes almost a lifetime to learn how to do a thing simply.

You're a trouble-maker. What race do you belong to, anyhow?' 'The human race,' I said. 'I come from the womb and I'm bound for the tomb, the same as you, the same as King George the Six, the same as Johnny Squat.

I was coughing and sneezing, my eyes were sore, my knees were shaky, I was as hungry as a bitch wolf, and I had exactly eight cents to my name. I didn't care. my history was longer by eleven thousand brand-new words, and at that moment I bet there wasn't a chairman of the board in all New York as happy as I.

That's one of the damnedest things I ever found out about human emotions and how treacherous they can be - the fact that you can hate a place with all your heart and soul and still be homesick for it. Not to speak of the fact that you can hate a person with all your heart and soul and still long for that person.

Essa é uma das piores coisas que descobri sobre as emoções humanas e como elas podem ser muito traiçoeiras — o fato de que é possível odiar um lugar de todo coração e com toda a alma e ainda sentir saudade. Sem falar que é possível odiar uma pessoa de todo o coração e com toda a alma e ainda suspirar por ela.

I've long since lost my taste for good coffee," he says. "I much prefer the kind that sooner or later, if you keep on drinking it, your hands will begin to shake and the whites of your eyes will turn yellow.

A veces, cuando bromea, la gente ignorante tiene una especie de inspirada temeridad que es de lo más alegre y contagiosa. Le levanta a uno el ánimo.

No era necesario poner lo que uno tenía que decir en un poema, un ensayo, un cuento o una novela. Sólo había que decirlo.

One night, in the warehouse of a grocery chain, I saw some egg-stealing rats at work. They worked in pairs. A small rat would straddle an egg and clutch it in his four paws. When he got a good grip on it, he'd roll over on his back. Then a bigger rat would grab him by the tail and drag him across the floor to a hole in the baseboard, a hole leading to a burrow.

When I get through tearing a lobster apart, or one of those tender West Coast octopuses, I feel like I had a drink from the fountain of youth.

Life is a goddam mess...but you wouldn't want to miss it!