A biography for Graydon Carterhasn’t been written yet.
“I really don't despise anyone. But there is a list of a half dozen people I would prefer never to hear from or see again.”
“Branding experts believe that just because they have rethought a company's image or name, the rest of us will automatically fall in line.”
“To discuss a Martin Amis book, you must first discuss the orchestrated release of a Martin Amis book. In London, which rightly prides itself on the vibrancy of its literary cottage industry, Amis is the Steve Jobs of book promoters, and his product rollouts are as carefully managed as anything Apple dreams up.”
“Everything I love about America is fragile.”
“Somewhere along the way, New York became all about money. Or rather, it was always about money, but it wasn't all about money, if you know what I mean. New York's not Geneva or Zurich yet, but we're certainly heading in that direction. London is, too.”
“Every man in the back of their minds would like to own a bar or a racehorse.”
“As someone who came to New York in the 1970s, I was, like so many of my friends, a certified member of what we now call the 99 percent - and I was a lot closer to the bottom than to the top of that 99 percent. At some point during the intervening years, I moved into the 1 percent.”
“Memory is often - perhaps usually - a distorting lens: what we think we remember isn't the way it was at all. It's what we'd like to remember.”
“After the collapse of Wall Street in the 1920s, the culture stopped being all about money, and the country survived and ultimately flourished.”
“Former vice president Al Gore has devoted his post-administration years to a mission to tell the world about global warming. It's funny, but in his civilian life Gore has discovered the voice that voters had trouble hearing when he ran for president in 2000. The voice he has found is clear, impassioned, and moving.”
“I might wear a dinner jacket once a year to our Oscar party - that's a big thing - but I don't go to parties. I'm social but I'm not a socialite person.”
“Television offers a range and scope, and a degree of creativity and daring, that the bottom-line, global-audience-obsessed, brand-driven movie industry just can't compete with.”
“We really care about photography at 'Vanity Fair.'”
“There is a certain ancient civility about tailors that is welcome - especially in modern London, which is now very much an international city, not an English city. They're still a little vessel of Englishness in what is otherwise a pretty rambunctious place.”
“Water-boarding can result in damage to the lungs and the brain, as well as long-term psychological trauma.”
“Conservatives define themselves more by their hatred of liberals than anything else, and, conversely, liberals by their distaste for conservatives.”
“Moping is an unattractive attribute in a man.”
“Satire works best when it hews close to the line between the outlandish and the possible - and as that line continues to grow thinner, the satirist's task becomes ever more difficult.”
“It's estimated that across Africa 100 elephants are killed for their tusks every day. It takes nothing more than simple math to get to what that adds up to in a year, and it's a distressing figure.”
“The fact is, unlike a lot of writers, I credit the people who help me. A lot of writers out there have a ton of researchers and they don't get credited in the book.”