Nick Tosches

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

“I don't have a college degree.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“For years, I never really pondered how I came to be a writer from where I came from.”