Bryan Burrough · 640 pages
Rating: (4.7K votes)
“To the generations of Americans raised since World War 2, the identities of criminals such as Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, "Ma" Barker, John Dillenger, and Clyde Barrow are no more real than are Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones. After decades spent in the washing machine of popular culture, their stories have been bled of all reality, to an extent that few Americans today know who these people actually were, much less that they all rose to national prominence at the same time. They were real.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
“History is written by the victors, they say, and there was no one alive who would come forward to dispute Hoover’s fabricated story. Never mind that there was no indication whatsoever in Bureau files that Ma Barker had ever fired a gun, robbed a bank, or done anything more criminal than live off her sons’ ill-gotten gains.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
“Art has now done for Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow something they could never achieve in life: it has taken a shark-eyed multiple murderer and his deluded girlfriend and transformed them into sympathetic characters, imbuing them with a cuddly likability they did not possess, and a cultural significance they do not deserve.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
“an odd-job detective agency with fuzzy lines of authority and responsibility.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
“When one looks back across a chasm of seventy years, through a prism of pulp fiction and bad gangster movies, there is a tendency to view the events of 1933-34 as mythic, as folkloric. To the generations of Americans raised since World War II, the identities of criminals such as Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, “Ma” Barker, John Dillinger, and Clyde Barrow are no more real than are Luke Skywalker or Indiana Jones. After decades spent in the washing machine of popular culture, their stories have been bled of all reality, to an extent that few Americans today know who these people actually were, much less that they all rose to national prominence at the same time.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
“Hoover viewed the Dillinger case as a potential quagmire and long resisted being drawn into it.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
“Hands up! Hands up! Everybody on the floor!” The effect was akin to three wild-eyed berserkers storming a prayer meeting.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
“But there was no denying Purvis’s ineptitude in the Dillinger hunt. Suspects were found then lost. His informants were hopeless. He raided the wrong apartments. He built no bridges to the Chicago police while annoying other departments. He’d had his car stolen from in front of his house.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
“By mid-summer only Ma Barker remained in Chicago, lost in her jigsaw puzzles. Karpis drove over to visit her one weekend and found she was doing surprisingly well. He and Dock took her to see a movie. To their horror, the film was preceded by a newsreel warning moviegoers to be on the lookout for Dillinger, Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Karpis, and the Barkers. Karpis scrunched low in his seat as their pictures flashed on the screen. “One of these men may be sitting next to you,” the announcer said. Karpis pulled his hat low over his forehead.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
“Clarence Hurt was driving, and he got lost. “Does anyone know where the Post Office Building is?” Hurt asked at one point.
“I can tell you,” Karpis said.
“How do you know where it is?” asked Clyde Tolson, who sat in the backseat with Hoover.
“We were thinking of robbing it,” Karpis said.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
“The first recorded U.S. bank robbery, actually a nighttime burglary, came in 1831, when a man named Edward Smith snuck into a Wall Street bank and made off with $245,000. He was caught and sentenced to a five-year term in Sing Sing.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
“the Bureau acquired the nickname “The Department of Easy Virtue.”
― Bryan Burrough, quote from Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34
Bryan Burrough
Born date August 13, 1961
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“Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor, — all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked, — who is good? not that men are ignorant, — what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.”
― W.E.B. Du Bois, quote from The Souls of Black Folk
“¿Y no es extraordinario que, desparecidas las causas, persistan los efectos? ¿Y que los efectos oculten a las causas?”
― Octavio Paz, quote from The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings
“Morrell, ever a true comrade, too had a splendid brain. In fact, and I who am about to die have the right to say it without incurring the charge of immodesty, the three best minds in San Quentin from the Warden down were the three that rotted there together in solitary. And here at the end of my days, reviewing all that I have known of life, I am compelled to the conclusion that strong minds are never docile. The stupid men, the fearful men, the men ungifted with passionate rightness and fearless championship - these are the men who make model prisoners. I thank all gods that Jake Oppenheimer, Ed Morrell, and I were not model prisoners.”
― Jack London, quote from The Star Rover
“—¡Deja de jugar con la comida! —le dijo por signos mi madre.
—Son nubes —respondió Dot.
—Las nubes no son rojas —dijo por signos Soph.
—Es el amanecer —replicó por signos Dot, desafiante—. Porque en mi plato está amaneciendo. Y a la salchicha le parece precioso. —Le esculpió una sonrisa a la salchicha con el cuchillo.
—Vaya desastre —le dijo por signos mi madre.
—Pero un desastre bonito —sonrió Dot. Le dio la vuelta a su plato para enseñárselo a nuestra madre. La salchicha estaba tumbada de espaldas, sonriéndoles a las nubes de kétchup.”
― Annabel Pitcher, quote from Ketchup Clouds
“Las palabras tienen poder.
Hay palabras que nos obligan a reír y nos hacen llorar. Palabras con las que empezar y palabras con las que terminar. Palabras que agarran los corazones en nuestros pechos y los aprietan fuerte, que hacen que nos hormiguee la piel sobre los huesos. Palabras tan bonitas que nos moldean, nos cambian para siempre, viven en nuestro interior durante todo el tiempo que tengamos aliento para pronunciarlas. Hay palabras olvidadas. Palabras que matan. Palabras enormes y aterradoras y terribles. Hay palabras Verdaderas.
Y luego hay imágenes.”
― Jay Kristoff, quote from Kinslayer
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