Quotes About Influence

In the end, a gun is an instrument to make someone surrender to your will or die, and music is exactly the opposite - it's seductive and invitational.

I have a lot of surrogate parents, but there's no one like your mother.

I might not be very smart, but I surround myself with smart people.

You can always tell a person's real character and personhood by those who closely surround him, especially if they're family.

I surround myself with good friends that help me keep my feet on the ground.

The reality is that I surround myself with very smart, very strong people - including my ex-wives.

I wanted James Carville to never die. I wanted Dylan, the poet, to not die. I wanted to put these people in a place where they would be inviolate. It wasn't enough to have a still life of them. I wanted to surround them with the lives they led.

If a man can be corrupted by a few books, I doubt if there was anything there to begin with.

Books are not missiles, you don't aim them at anybody

But here is the thing. When he gets on me, I suddenly feel I am fat. I feel am terrifically fat, so fat that Rudy is a tiny thing and hardly there at all.

When I look back on it, all of our important decisions have been figured out when we were drinking.

He didn't know the right people. That's all a police record means in this rotten crime-ridden country.

Maybe it's the TV commercials. They make you hate everything they try to sell. God, they must think the public is a halfwit. Every time some jerk in a white coat with a stethoscope hanging around his neck holds up some toothpaste or a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of beer or a mouthwash or a jar of shampoo or a little box of something that makes a fat wrestler smell like mountain lilac I always make note never to buy any. Hell, I wouldn't buy the product even if I liked it.

The trouble with cops is not that they're dumb or crooked or tough, but that they think just being a cop gives them a little something that they didn't have before. Maybe it did once, but not anymore. They're topped by too many smart minds.

Newspapers are owned and published by rich men. Rich men all belong to the same club. Sure, there's competition—hard tough competition for circulation, for newsbeats, for exclusive stories. Just so long as it doesn't damage the prestige and privilege and position of the owners. If it does, down comes the lid.

But this Hemingway stuff is what really has me down. A gag, I said. An old, old gag. Who is this Hemingway person at all? A guy that keeps saying the same thing over and over until you begin to believe it must be good. That must take a hell of a long time, the big man said.

We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect, but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody has to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union or what have you, expects some consideration in return.

The law is where you buy it and what you pay for it.

Hemingway says somewhere that the good writer competes only with the dead.

Gano muchísima pasta. Tengo que ganar muchísima pasta para untar a los tipos a los que tengo que untar para ganar muchísima pasta y untar así a los tipos que tengo que untar.

Hemingway dice en alguna parte que el buen escritor compite únicamente con los muertos.

Newspapers are owned and published by rich men. Rich men all belong to the same club. Sure, there's competition – hard, tough competition for circulation, for newsbeats, for exclusive stories.

We live in what is called a democracy, rule by the majority of the people. A fine ideal if it could be made to work. The people elect but the party machines nominate, and the party machines to be effective must spend a great deal of money. Somebody had to give it to them, and that somebody, whether it be an individual, a financial group, a trade union, or what have you, expects some consideration in return.

You can hold an important public office forever in our country with no qualifications for it but a clean nose, a photogenic face, and a close mouth. If on top of that you look good on a horse, you are unbeatable.