Quotes from Nick Tosches

The things I wanted to be when I was a kid were an archeologist, because of dinosaur bones; a garbage man, because they got to ride on the side of the trucks; and a writer.

I don't have a college degree.

The older you get, the more you live with ghosts.

To me, music's something I can dance to or listen to. To write about it is always more of what the music represents, or what it reflects. Like an ideal song, to me, is a song that you can dance to, that summons up some darker and greater mystery.

When I was young, I kept trying to read 'Moby-Dick', and I couldn't get that far into it. And I kept thinking, 'Well, man, if I can't read the great American novel, I could never be a writer.' And this bothered me a great deal.

Life is a racket. Writing is a racket. Sincerity is a racket. Everything's a racket.

As a young man, I felt a need to communicate with somebody or something, but it seemed in my own particular environment that that wasn't an option. On the other hand, I probably lacked the courage to do so, even if it was an option.

Mortality applies to every aspect of life. The fear of death is the driving fear of life.

I often wonder if I had the complete freedom to not have to write, if I would write. That's the one mystery that I hope I get to experience.

Exceptional men do not hold their experiences to be out of the ordinary or of interest to anyone else. Unlike the trodden fungus-men, they are not so ignorantly and presumptuously self-absorbed. They are nobody and they know it. They shun notice. They are exceedingly rare.

The older you get, the more you live with ghosts.

I believe in the power of origins, a belief that, as Ecclesiastes put it, 'that wich is done is that wich shall be done: and there is no new thing under de sun'; that we claim as originality and discovery are nothing but the airs and delusios of our innocence, ignorance, and arrogance: that whatever is said was said better - more powerfully, beautifully, and purely, long ago

Everybody hated the Chinese, and the Chinese, ever willing to oblige, reciprocated.

At the time of the Russian emancipation, about 20 percent of the Russian population lived in serfdom. In the United States at this time, about 10 percent of the population lived in slavery.

But the lie often repeated becomes history, and the snake-oil pitchman's forgery of yore becomes the inspirational gospel of a posterity that sees itself as worldly and wise.

I wanted to be alone, not forgotten.

America was a land of machines, and it was through machines, the miraculous handmaidens of mob culture, that the muses of illiteracy brought America her voice and vision during the years of the immigrants' waves. Centuries ago, movable type had given literacy to the common man. Now, through these wondrous newer machines, he would give it back.

What I can say with honesty is that my research in Russia and in Germany has brought me nothing but the worsening of my eyesight and the waste of years of my life. And I did it all for you.

Sportsman's Hall offered four sporting events: rat killing by a weasel, rat killing by a dog, rat killing by a man, and dogfighting.

It is always easier to see in another what we are uncomfortable with in ourselves.

Rothstein worked with Park Avenue men as beards in the club-house, and with Broadway characters, such as Morris the Boob on The Lawn, and he probably bet away from the track, too.

It don't mean a damned thing," Colonel Parker was rumored to have remarked on Elvis's death. "It's just like when he was away in the army.

Of course, Heraclitus was right. Everything flows; nothing abides.

On February 3, 1959, near Fargo, North Dakota, an airplane carrying Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper (J. P. Richardson) crashed, killing all aboard. Waylon Jennings, who was in Holly's band at the time, gave his seat to the Big Bopper at the last minute.