“Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. ~Tom Wolfe”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“Sir Gerald Moore: I was at dinner last evening, and halfway through the pudding, this four-year-old child came alone, dragging a little toy cart. And on the cart was a fresh turd. Her own, I suppose. The parents just shook their heads and smiled. I've made a big investment in you, Peter. Time and money, and it's not working. Now, I could just shake my head and smile. But in my house, when a turd appears, we throw it out. We dispose of it. We flush it away. We don't put it on the table and call it caviar.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“Like more than one Englishman in New York, he looked upon Americans as hopeless children whom Providence had perversely provided with this great swollen fat fowl of a continent. Any way one chose to relieve them of their riches, short of violence, was sporting, if not morally justifiable, since they would only squander it in some tasteless and useless fashion, in any event.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“[H]e could see the island of Manhattan off to the left. The towers were jammed together so tightly, he could feel the mass and stupendous weight.Just think of the millions, from all over the globe, who yearned to be on that island, in those towers, in those narrow streets! There it was, the Rome, the Paris, the London of the twentieth century, the city of ambition, the dense magnetic rock, the irresistible destination of all those who insist on being where things are happening-and he was among the victors!”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“A liberal is a conservative who has been arrested.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“The Yanks always wore neckties that leapt out in front of their shirts, as if to announce the awkwardness to follow.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“How very American it was to assume that these unsmiling Chinese would be pleased if one showed a preference for their native implements...How very American it was to feel somehow guilty unless one struggled over rice noodles and lumps of meat with things that looked like enlarged knitting needles.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“Vulgar, but not as vulgar as Louis Vuitton, thought Sherman.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“In this little room full of people he was suffering the pangs of men whose egos lose their virginity—as happens when they overhear for the first time a beautiful woman’s undiluted, full-strength opinion of their masculine selves.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“Your self…is other people, all the people you're tied to, and it's only a thread.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“Like most men, Sherman was innocent of the routine salutatory techniques of the fashionable hostesses. For at least forty-five seconds every guest was the closest, dearest, jolliest, most wittily conspiratorial friend a girl ever had. Every male guest she touched on the arm (any other part of the body presented problems) and applied a little heartfelt pressure. Every guest, male or female, she looked at with a radar lock upon the eyes, as if captivated (by the brilliance, the wit, the beauty, and the incomparable memories).”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“His genius had only begun to flower. This was only journalism, after all, a cup of tea on the way to his eventual triumph as a novelist. ”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“Then it dawned on Kramer. The cops weren’t all that much different from the assistant D.A.s. It was the muck factor. The cops got tired of packing blacks and Latins off to jail all day, too. It was even worse for them, because they had to dive deeper into the muck to do it. The only thing that made it constructive was the idea that they were doing it for somebody—for the decent people. So they opened their eyes, and now they were attuned to all the good people with colored skin…who rose to the top…during all this relentless stirring of the muck… You couldn’t exactly call it enlightenment, thought Kramer, but it was a fucking start.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“Sai la favola del pipistrello?
Gli uccelli e le bestie erano in guerra. Quando stavano vincendo gli uccelli, il pipistrello diceva di essere un uccello, perché sapeva volare. Quando vincevano le bestie, il pipistrello diceva di essere una bestia, perché aveva i denti.
Per questo il pipistrello non si fa vedere di giorno. Nessuno vuole guardare le sue due facce. (Pag. 614, "Il falò delle vanità")”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“She was wearing a skirt and a big-shouldered jacket of a royal blue that was fashionable in France, a blue-and-white-striped silk blouse, and electric-blue lizard pumps with white calf caps on the toes.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“He had the gaunt and haunted athletic look of those who stare daily down the bony gullet of the great god Aerobics.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“and in that moment, Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later. For the first time he realized that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best as he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps, love, adopted a role called being a father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. And now that boy, that good actor, had grown old and fragile and tired, wearier than ever at the thought of trying to hoist the Protector's armor back onto his shoulders again, now, so far down the line.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“The only thing that had truly stuck in Sherman's mind about Christopher Marlowe, after nine years at Buckley, four years at St. Paul's, and four years at Yale, was that you were, in fact, supposed to know who Christopher Marlowe was.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“No wonder marriages used to hold up better. Sherman's parents and their friends had all had plenty of servants, and the servants had worked long hours and lived in. If you were unwilling to argue in front of the servants, then there wasn't much opportunity to argue at all.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“How the stories circulated on every campus! If you weren’t making $250,000 a year within five years, than you were either grossly stupid or grossly lazy. That was the word. By age 30, $500,000–and that sum had the taint of the mediocre. By age forty you were either making a million a year or you were timid and incompetent. Make it now! That motto burned in every heart, like myocarditis.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“Something hits the Mayor on the shoulder. It hurts like hell! There on the floor-a jar of mayonnaise, an eight-ounce jar of Hellmann's mayonnaise. Half full! Half consumed! Somebody has thrown a half-eaten jar of Hellmann's mayonnaise at him! In that instant
the most insignificant thing takes over his mind. Who in the name of God would bring a half-eaten eight-ounce jar of Hellmann's mayonnaise to a public meeting?”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“Кретин в разрисованных кроссовках, который с перепугу рвёт стометровку за 8,4 секунды.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“Сидит и медленно вращает из стороны в сторону головой, как газонный опрыскиватель.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“Haben Sie schon mal mit einem logisch denkenden Verrückten gesprochen? Die sind viel schlimmer als simple Verrückte.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“Thank God in heaven! What a relief! They could let their breaths out now. Miss Efficiency was a bigot. These days the thing about bigotry was, it was undignified. It was a sign of Low Rent origins, of inferior social status, of poor taste. So they were the superiors of their English baby nurse, after all. What a fucking relief.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
Tom Wolfe
Born place: in Richmond, Virginia, The United States
Born date March 2, 1931
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“Why did everyone like that story so much when it wasn't true? Why was everyone so eager to believe it? Was it because, in real life, ever after's generally stink?”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, quote from Just Ella
“Hope is such a beautiful dream that dies such a hideous death.”
― Anne Elisabeth Stengl, quote from Heartless
“On those luminous mornings Adela returned from the market, like Pomona emerging from the flames of day, spilling from her basket the coloful beauty of the sun –the shiny pink cherries full of juice under their transparent skins, the mysterious apricots in whose golden pulp lay the core of long afternoons. And next to that pure poetry of fruit, she unloaded sides of meat with their keyboard of ribs swollen with energy and strength, and seaweeds of vegetables like dead octopuses and squids–the raw material of meals with a yet undefined taste, the vegetative and terrestrial ingredients of dinner, exuding a wild and rustic smell.”
― Bruno Schulz, quote from The Street of Crocodiles
“He had the feeling that humanity was running in place. So many centuries and they had not learned anything new.”
― Oliver Pötzsch, quote from The Hangman's Daughter
“Ralph arrived first. He’s really fat. And he isn’t even four years old. He doesn’t say much either. He grunts and grabs a lot, though. Usually his mouth is stuffed full of something.”
― Judy Blume, quote from Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
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