J.R. Moehringer Quotes & Sayings

Some of football's gaudiest displays of manliness are purely aesthetic. It's not what players do, it's how they look doing it. — J.R. Moehringer

Money. Love. There's not a problem that isn't caused by one or the other. And there's not a problem that can't be solved by one or the other. — J.R. Moehringer

Did you read where the great-grandson of Nathan Hale got married this weekend? Give me liberty or give me death. That's what the groom will be saying in about one month. — J.R. Moehringer

It cost me everything, absolutely everything, but maybe it's not love if it doesn't cost us everything. — J.R. Moehringer

Hell freezing over?
I don't know. But the devil's definitely wearing a sweater. — J.R. Moehringer

Any book is better than no book. Slowly, surely, one will lead you to another, which will lead you to the best. — J.R. Moehringer

Your best is whatever you can do comfortably without having a breakdown. — J.R. Moehringer

Also, Willie, I dig telling the truth. Words can be twisted but a photo never lies.
Sutton laughs.
What's funny? Photographer says.
Nothing. Except - that's pure horseshit kid. I can't think of anything that lies more than a photo. In fact every photo is a dirty stinking lie because it's a frozen moment - and time can't be frozen. Some of the biggest lies I've ever run across have been photos. Some of them were of me. — J.R. Moehringer

Oh kid, it's all about confidence. That's the whole shebang right there. Whatever you do, do it with your nuts. That's how Ruth swung a bat-with his nuts. Court a girl, rob a bank, brush your teeth, do it with and from your God-given nuts or don't do it at all. — J.R. Moehringer

There's that old journalism rule that sunshine is the great disinfectant - which is how reporters bust their way into meetings and such all the time. In sports, I really think winning is the great disinfectant. — J.R. Moehringer

Like the Earth, the Web is a less appealing place than it used to be. If I want attitude and arguing and meanness and profanity and wrong information screamed at me as gospel, I'll get in a time machine and spend Christmas with my family in 1977. — J.R. Moehringer

Vegas is like the old definition of writing: though I don't enjoy writing, I love having written. Though I didn't enjoy Vegas, I love having lived there. — J.R. Moehringer

I hate when people ask what a book is about. People who read for plot, people who suck out the story like the cream filling in an Oreo, should stick to comic strips and soap operas ... Every book worth a damn is about emotions and love and death and pain. It's about words. It's about a man dealing with life. Okay? — J.R. Moehringer

Do you know why God invented writers? Because he loves a good story. And he doesn't give a damn about the words. Words are the curain we've hung between him and our true selves. Try not to think about the words. Don't strin for the perfect sentence. There's no such thing. Writing si guesswork. Every sentence is an educated guess, the readers as much as yours. — J.R. Moehringer

His current theory is that Sutton lived three separate lives. The one he remembered, the one he told people about, the one that really happened. — J.R. Moehringer

As if I'd said I wanted to sell cheese sandwiches outside Grateful
Dead concerts ... — J.R. Moehringer

Did you know Socrates said we love whatever we lack? Or think we lack? Socrates? If you feel stupid, you'll fall for someone brainy. If you feel ugly, you'll flip your lid for someone who's easy on the eyes. — J.R. Moehringer

A book is the only real escape from this fallen world. Aside from death. — J.R. Moehringer

Boy did he hate banks. He told me once that the Founding Fathers worried more about banks than they worried about the British. They knew that banks had been causing chaos, bringing empires to their knees, for centuries, all in the name of free enterprise. Photographer — J.R. Moehringer

Bess and I had a talk. January 1919. Everything flowed from that talk, that moment. Everything. Look back on your life and see if you can pinpoint the moment when everything changed. If you can't? That means you haven't had your momemt yet, and you better hold on to your ass, it's coming. — J.R. Moehringer

If only Ed Fleming had a mother who gave such sound advice. The manager of Wazoo's, a downtown Denver restaurant, Fleming is a CSU alum who has been darned giddy about the Rams' recent success. So giddy that he donned a necklace made of Pez candies, a red blazer - and nothing else. A few people gaped (some actually set aside their beers), but most ignored Fleming as he strutted like a red-blazered rooster, demanding that all hail the Mighty Naked Beer King. — J.R. Moehringer

Write every day; never give up; it's supposed to be difficult; try to find some pleasure and reward in the act of writing, because you can't look for praise from editors, readers, or critics. In other words, tips that are much easier to give than to take. — J.R. Moehringer

To be a man, a boy must see a man. — J.R. Moehringer

To simply hold a book, to imagine what it might say, would be a comfort. — J.R. Moehringer

My father was a food lover and a deadbeat dad, and maybe a connection between good food and bad dads was forged early, in the deepest folds of my subconscious, where we make so many decisions about our parents. — J.R. Moehringer

Baseball always gets credit for the foundational part of masculinity - the father thing. The eternal game of backyard catch, 'Field of Dreams', the Ripkens, the Griffeys, the Bondses, so on. But football is the real paternal game, because it's a conveyor belt of father figures, in the form of coaches. — J.R. Moehringer

Your ancestral homeland is Queens, fuckface. — J.R. Moehringer

I began dividing life in absolutes ... Things and people were either perfectly bad, or perfectly good, and when life didn't obey this black-and-white rule, when things or people were complex or contradictory, I pretended otherwise. I turned every defeat into a disaster, every success into an epic triumph, and separated all people into heroes or villains. Unable to bear ambiguity, I built a barricade of delusions against it. — J.R. Moehringer

Baseball, boxing, handball - sooner or later every game gets compared to narrative, but only in football are the plays perfectly linear, drawn up with letters, and only in football is the field itself lined like a sheet of notebook paper. — J.R. Moehringer

I don't know. Sometimes I try to say what's on my mind and it comes out sounding like I ate a dictionary and I'm shitting pages. Sorry — J.R. Moehringer

Life is complicated, love isn't. If you need to think about it for one half second, you're not in love. — J.R. Moehringer

Beer is amazing. Nutritional. Medicinal. A beverage, but also a meal. — J.R. Moehringer

[G]randma was always afraid of something. She set aside time each day for dread. And not nameless dread. She was quite specific about the various tragedies stalking her. She feared pneumonia, muggers, riptides, meteors, drunk drivers, drug addicts, serial killers, tornadoes, doctors, unscrupulous grocery clerks, and the Russians. The depth of Grandma's dread came home to me when she bought a lottery ticket and sat before the tv as the numbers were called. After her first three numbers were a match, she began praying feverishly that she wouldn't have the next three. She dreaded winning, for fear that her heart would give out. — J.R. Moehringer

Now look", my mother said. "When I feel myself starting to worry, I just tell myself, I will not worry about something that will never happen, and that always calms me, because most of the things we worry about will never happen. Why don't you give that a try? — J.R. Moehringer

Food still isn't my thing, but I've learned to respect its power and significance. — J.R. Moehringer

Tacked above my desk are photos of artists I admire - Hopper, Sargent, Twain - and postcards from beloved bookstores where I've spent all my time and money - Tattered Cover, Elliot Bay, Harvard Bookstore. — J.R. Moehringer

I'm a big fan of the poet Mary Jo Salter, and although she doesn't need to be discovered at all - she's widely admired and anthologized and extremely accomplished - I wish she were a household name. — J.R. Moehringer

History is the narrative of people searching for a place to go. — J.R. Moehringer

Banks gamed the system, fucked society, caused the crash of 1929, drove the world into the abyss and paved the way for the rise of fascism - Stalin, Hitler - and they got despicably, disgustingly rich in the process. Banks. Banks did all that. — J.R. Moehringer

It takes just as many men to build a sturdy man, son, as it does to build a tower. You will look back on this time and remember remarkably little of it, excpt the extent to which I tried or did not try. — J.R. Moehringer

While I fear that we're drawn to what abandons us, and to what seems most likely to abandon us, in the end I believe we're defined by what embraces us. — J.R. Moehringer

Basketball's eras are defined by teams - Celtics, Lakers, Bulls - and baseball's epochs are defined by players - Ruth, Robinson, Mantle - but with football, it's the sideline strategists, the nutty professors and top coated Lears. — J.R. Moehringer

Time is a thief, but he's not subtle. He's a thug. And youth is a little old lady walking through the park with a pocketbook full of cash. You want to avoid being like youth? You want to keep time from robbing you? Hold on for dear life, boys. When time tries to snatch something from you, just grab tighter. Don't let go. That's what memory is. Not letting go. — J.R. Moehringer

I've been trying to write a book since before I was old enough to vote, and I've collected many rejection slips from publishers and magazines. I used to keep them all stuck to my refrigerator, with magnets, but an ex-girlfriend told me they were depressing, and defeatist, and suggested I take them down. A very wise suggestion on her part. — J.R. Moehringer

The greatest players use anger as fuel. Michael Jordan played every night with something like road rage. — J.R. Moehringer

Every book is a miracle,' Bill said. 'Every book represents a moment when someone sat quietly - and that quiet is part of the miracle, make no mistake - and tried to tell the rest of us a story. — J.R. Moehringer

Photographer shoots Sutton in close-up, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway behind his head. The expressway was built while Sutton was in prison. God what a monstrosity, Sutton says. I didn't think they could make Brooklyn uglier. I underestimated them. — J.R. Moehringer

While I was busy hating Vegas, and hiding from Vegas, a funny thing happened. I grew to love Vegas. — J.R. Moehringer

Long before it legally served me, the bar saved me. It restored my faith when I was a boy, tended me as a teenager, and when I was a young man the bar embraced me. — J.R. Moehringer

In Zurich, in a cafe overlooking the Limmat, I ate butter-drenched white asparagus pulled from the ground that morning; it had the aftertaste of champagne. I've been able to appreciate epic meals in San Francisco, New Orleans, Berlin, Paris, Las Vegas. — J.R. Moehringer

Now, whenever I need to go online, I confine myself to a tight circle: Gmail, MLB, NYTimes, Slate and maybe Facebook. — J.R. Moehringer

Work is destiny. A man talks about the woman he loves, he might sound excited, but get him talking about his job, then check his eyes - that's the real him. A man is his job, kid, and I had no job, so I was a bum. A loser. America's a great place to be a winner, but it's hell's basement for losers. Three — J.R. Moehringer

Of course many bars in Manhasset, like bars everywhere, were nasty places, full of pickled people marinating in regret. — J.R. Moehringer

You think you choose the subjects of your books. But sometimes, in ways you don't know, the books choose you. — J.R. Moehringer

If you can live in Vegas, or visit Vegas, and leave in one piece, still loving it and somehow laughing about it, you should spend at least part of your last night in town doing something that will serve you well no matter where you go next: thank your lucky stars. — J.R. Moehringer

If you think Sigourney Weaver is
sexy then you are a homosexual. — J.R. Moehringer

In Manhasset you were either Yankees or Mets, rich or poor, sober or drunk ... You were 'Gaelic' or 'garlic, as one schoolmate told me, and I couldn't admit, to him or myself, that I had both Irish and Italian ancestors. — J.R. Moehringer

People just don't understand how many men it takes to build one good man. Next time you're in Manhattan and you see one of those mighty skyscrapers going up, pay attention to how many men are engaged in the enterprise. It takes just as many men to build a sturdy man, son, as it does to build a tower. — J.R. Moehringer

Truth has its place. In a courtroom, certainly. A boardroom? I don't know. I think truth is in the listener. Truth is something the listener bestows on a story
or not — J.R. Moehringer

The glint of devilment in his bright blue eyes, so blue that the FBI once described them in bulletins as azure. It's the rare bank robber who moves the FBI to such lyricism. — J.R. Moehringer

Yeah, says the Newsday reporter, he's a real pacifist. He's the Gandhi of Gangsters. — J.R. Moehringer