Quotes from David Carr

The best intentions frequently met their match around me.

Everyone is told just as much as he needs to know, including the self.

By my reckoning, you are issued about a dozen friends in life, and if one of mine happens to be in a prison jumpsuit, well, better him than me, but that doesn't erase the bond.

And because I had been in some tight corners before and had known real fear, if I found something that was true, I was happy to just write it up and deal with the fallout. No big.

There is only so much space on any one person's hard drive, and old memories are prone to replacement by newer ones.

People remember what they can live with more often than how they lived.

Memories are like that. They live between synapses and between the people who hold them. Memories, even epic ones, are perishable from their very formation even in people who don't soak their brains in mood-altering chemicals.

After reading four pages of continuous ten-year-old dialogue magically recalled by someone who was in the throes of alcohol withdrawal at the time, I wondered how he did it. No I didn't. I knew he made it up. It was easy and defendable, really, sublimating and eliding the past in service of a larger Emotional Truth.

Drugs, it seems to me, do not conjure demons, they access them. Was I faking it then, or am I faking it now? Which, you might ask, of my two selves did I make up?

Being a good writer doesn't make you a good reporter, it takes hustle.

Keep in mind that when public figures get in trouble for something they said, it is usually not because they misspoke, but because they accidentally told the truth.

As I sit today, I am a genuine, often pleasant person. I am able to imitate a human being for long spurts of time, do solid work for a reputable organization, and have, over the breadth of time, proven to be an attentive father and husband. So how to reconcile my past with my current circumstances? Drugs, it seems to me, do not conjure demons, they access them. Was I faking it then, or am I faking it now? Which, you might ask, of my two selves did I make up?

End-stage addiction is mostly about waiting for the police, or someone, to come and bury you in your shame.

The trick of enjoying New York is not to be so busy grinding your way to the center of the earth that you fail to notice the sparkle of the place, a scale and a kind of wonder that puts all human endeavors in their proper place.

We tell ourselves that we lie to protect others, but the self usually comes out looking damn good in the process.

Some of the burdens we carry include false weight, perhaps to make up for all the horrible stuff we actually did and forgot.

The onset of adulthood is an organic, creeping process. No one wakes up one day and decides, Lo, on this day I shall forever put away childish things and begin clipping coupons to go to Wal-Mart.

If marriage is about deciding to love on a daily basis, I have woken up to a no-brainer every day since.

This is the point where the knowing, irony-infused author laughs along with his readers about his time among the aphorisms, how he was once so gullible and needy that he drank deeply of such weak and fruity Kool-Aid. That's some other book. Slogans saved my life. All of them--the dumb ones, the preachy ones, the imperatives, the cliches, the injunctives, the gooey, Godly ones, the shameless, witless ones.

Memories are like that. They live between synapses and between the people who hold them. Memories, even epic ones, are perishable from their very formation even in people who don't soak their brains in mood-altering chemicals. There is only so much space on any one person's hard drive, and old memories are prone to replacement by newer ones.

C]ivilians are equally bewildering to the addict. I've watched people drink a glass and a half of wine and push away the rest. What exactly is the point of that?

Necessity is a mother.

There is no such thing as a social crack user.

It wasn't that I wanted to be a writer; I just didn't want to be stupid.