Neil Strauss · 431 pages
Rating: (25.5K votes)
“On Ecstasy, Joan Rivers looks like Pamela Anderson, so imagine what Pamela Anderson looked like.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“Looking down on it from the helicopter, with a bottle of Jack in my left hand, a bag of pills in my right hand, and a blond head bobbing up and doen in my lap, I felt like the king of the world.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“There was one dude in a jeans jacket who I swear to God shit in his pants when all of a sudden I was inches away from his face playing drums in the air.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“I've already spent ten years of my life apologizing for that band. As their manager, that's all I really did. Apologize. For years afterward I'd walk into a hotel lobby and the receptionist would call to me, 'Mr. McGhee.' And I'd run up and drop to my knees and say, 'Oh, Jesus, I'm really sorry.'
They'd look at me funny and say, 'No, nothing's wrong. You have a telephone call.'
And I'd breathe a sigh of relief and thank the good Lord above that I wasn't managing Mötley Crüe anymore.
~ Doc McGhee.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“There were always blind, deaf, or handicapped people hanging around the brothers, and I figured it was evidence that they either had a soft, compassionate side or were running some kind of mysterious scam.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“The angry man will defeat Himself in battle As well as in life.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“We thought we had elevated animal behavior to an art form. But then we met Ozzy.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“But what everybody always loved Mötley Crüe for was being a fucking decadent band: for being able to walk in a room and inhale all the alcohol, girls, pills, and trouble in sight.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“I announced to everyone that I was embarking on a solo tour. Not a music tour, but a tour of drugs and prostitutes.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“I just wanted peace and quiet. So I waded into the ocean with a bellar in my hand. The waves were cold and kept smacking my clothes, higher and higher, until they knocked my drink out of my hand. Soon, my hair was wet and sticking to the back of my neck. Then I blacked out.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“If there’s one genetic trait that automatically disqualifies a man from being able to rock, it’s curly hair. Nobody cool has curly hair; people like Richard Simmons, the guy from Greatest American Hero, and the singer from REO Speedwagon have curls. The only exceptions are Ian Hunter from Mott the Hoople, whose hair is more tangled than curly, and Slash, but his hair is fuzzy and that’s cool.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“Did you get your presents from me?" I asked.
"Nikki." Doc grimaced. "You're sick. I answered the door, and there were two girls in Nazi outfits and a nun. What's wrong with you?"
"Fuck, Doc. I was just having fun. How about you, Mr. Udo? Did you enjoy your gifts?"
"My wife is like my air," he said.
"Huh?"
"Without her, I cannot live, She is my air."
I stood there feeling like a giant prick. I had tried to contaminate his air.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“I understood then why rock stars have such big egos: from the stage, the world is just one faceless, shirtless, obedient mass, as far as the eye can see.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“Fate, however, has a way of finding your vulnerabilities where you least expect them, illuminating them so that you realize how glaringly obvious they are, and then mercilessly driving a spike straight into their most delicate center.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“Nowadays, I don’t believe in the Christian concept of a God who created people for the sole purpose of judging and punishing them. After all, if one of the commandments is “Thou shalt not kill,” does that make God a hypocrite when he does things like flooding the world or destroying Sodom and Gomorrah?”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“But, unlike us, Ozzy had a restraint, a limit, a conscience, a brake. And that restraint came in the form of a homely, rotund little British woman whose very name sets lips trembling and knees knocking: Sharon Osbourne, a shitkicker and disciplinarian like no other we had ever met, a woman whose presence could in an instant send us reeling back to our childhood fear of authority.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“Those words—“Trust me, I’m a junkie”—should have been a clue right there.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“A funny thing about girls, though, is that the more you do wrong, the more they like you.”
― Neil Strauss, quote from The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
“To know you will be lonely is not the same as being lonely.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Oscar and Lucinda
“The instruments you have are the right instruments for you, because you’ve been shaped by them. That’s another law.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“The things here are stronger--the things that differentiate us from one another are too powerful. The common interest is no longer decisive. It has broken up already and given place to the interest of the individual. Now and then something still will shine through from that other time when we all wore the same rig, but already it is dwindled and dim. These others here are still our comrades and yet our comrades no longer--that is what is so sad. All else went west in the war, but comradeship we did believe in; now only to find that what death could not do, life is achieving; it is driving us asunder.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, quote from The Road Back
“And if I get a little chemically imbalanced in the head, like we all know I tend to get sometimes, and I don't want my parents or brother knowing, Will's like, 'We'll deal with it.' He's never said, 'I'll fix it up.' He just says, 'You're not up to going back to uni to finish your Honours this year? Big deal. There's next year. We'll deal with it.'" She nods. "That's what he does well.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son
“If you had ordered British troops to drive children and old people into gas chambers, none of whom had done anything wrong except they were the children of their parents, can you imagine British troops doing anything but mutiny against such orders?
"Well, as a matter of fact there were some Germans, soldiers, officers, priests, doctors, and ordinary civilians who refused to obey these orders and said, 'I am not going to do this because I would not like to live and have this on my conscience. I'm not going to push them into gas chambers and then say later I was under orders and justify it by saying they were going to be pushed in by someone anyhow, and I can't stop it and other people will push them more cruelly. Therefore, it's in their best interest that I shove them in gently.'
"You see, the trouble was, not enough of these people refused.”
― Leon Uris, quote from QB VII
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