Tony Horwitz Quotes & Sayings

Seven severely depressed prisoners were listed as having died of nostalgia. — Tony Horwitz

Everywhere, it seemed, I had to explore two pasts and two presents; one white, one black, separate and unreconcilable. The past had poisoned the present and the present, in turn, now poisoned remembrance of things past. — Tony Horwitz

It is difficult to gaze in awe at the wonders of ancient Egypt with modern Egypt tugging so insistently at your sleeve. — Tony Horwitz

There are people one knows and people one doesn't. One shouldn't cheapen the former by feigning intimacy with the latter. — Tony Horwitz

We were raised Methodists," Sue said. "But we converted to the Confederacy. There wasn't time for both."
"War is hell," Ed deadpanned. "And it just might send us there. — Tony Horwitz

Finally, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November 1863 as Thanksgiving: a day to solemnly acknowledge the sacrifices made for the Union ... Shopping was part of the American Dream, too. So in 1939, at the urging of merchants, FDR moved Thanksgiving ahead a week, to lengthen the Christmas shopping season. And there it has remained, a day of national gluttony, retail pageantry, TV football, and remembrance of the Pilgrims, a folk so austere that they regarded Christmas as a corrupt Papist holiday. — Tony Horwitz

I am an agnostic on most matters of faith, but on the subject of maps I have always been a true believer. It is on the map, therefore it is, and I am. — Tony Horwitz

The first thing you notice, coming to Israel from the Arab world, is that you have left the most courteous region of the globe and entered the rudest. The difference is so profound that you're left wondering when the mutation in Semitic blood occurred, as though God parted the Red Sea and said: Okay, you rude ones, keep wandering toward the Promised Land. The rest of you can stay here and rot in the desert, saying 'welcome, most welcome' and drowning each other in tea until the end of time. — Tony Horwitz

The past was a consumable, subject to the national preference for familiar products. And history, in America, is a dish best served plain. The first course could include a dollop of Italian in 1492, but not Spanish spice or French sauce or too much Indian corn. Nothing too filling or fancy ahead of the turkey and pumpkin pie, just the way Grandma used to cook it. — Tony Horwitz

Van Laar wasn't a climate change denier, nor did he talk defensively of the United States' appetite for oil. Rather, he confessed, "I don't give much of a fuck, and nobody I know does, either, because this industry is giving me a future, even if it's a short one and we're all about to toast together. — Tony Horwitz

I asked him if he thought "there" was better than "here." "Not better," he said. "I mean, my great-great-grandpap got his leg shot off. But I feel like it was bigger somehow." Hawkins flipped through pages of Civil War pictures. "At work, I mix dyes and put them in a machine. I'm thirty-six and I've spent almost half my life in Dye House No. 1. I make eight dollars sixty-one cents an hour, which is okay, 'cept everyone says the plant will close and go to China." He put the book back on the shelf. "I just feel like the South has been given a bum deal ever since that War. — Tony Horwitz

I couldn't think of another city in the world that lined its streets with stone leviathans honoring failed rebels against the state. — Tony Horwitz

Hardcore chicken! — Tony Horwitz

Egyptians undergo an odd personality change behind the wheel of a car. In every other setting, aggression and impatience are frowned upon. The unofficial Egyptian anthem "Bokra, Insha'allah, Malesh" (Tomorrow, God Willing, Never Mind) isn't just an excuse for laziness. In a society requiring millennial patience, it is also a social code dictating that no one make too much of a fuss about things. But put an Egyptian in the driver's seat and he shows all the calm and consideration of a hooded swordsman delivering Islamic justice. — Tony Horwitz

When Union litter-bearers climbed out of their trenches, four days after the assault, they found only two men still alive amongst the piles of stinking corpses. One burial party discovered a dead Yankee with a diary in his pocket, the last entry of which read: June 3. Cold Harbor. I was killed. — Tony Horwitz

Even aimless journeys have a purpose ... — Tony Horwitz

Like so much in Atlanta, Stone Mountain had become a bland and inoffensive consumable: the Confederacy as hood ornament. Not for the first time, though more deeply than ever before, I felt a twinge of affinity for the neo-Confederates I'd met in my travels. Better to remember Dixie and debate its philosophy than to have its largest shrine hijacked for Coca-Cola ads and MTV songs. — Tony Horwitz

John Brown, raised by disciplinarians, became one himself. — Tony Horwitz

Cook," the historian Bernard Smith speculates, "increasingly realised that wherever he went he was spreading the curses much more liberally than the benefits of European civilization. — Tony Horwitz

The best you can do is catch an echo of the man. You can never reach out and touch him. — Tony Horwitz

During a mock battle attended by President Warren Harding in 1921, Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler exhumed the arm [of Stonewall Jackson; he didn't believe it was buried there] and reburied it in a metal box. — Tony Horwitz

You asked how I'd define prejudice. That's it. Making assumptions about people you've never met. — Tony Horwitz

Cook, judging from his journals, was not a pious man. A product of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, he valued reason above all else, and showed little patience for what he called "Priest craft" and "superstition. — Tony Horwitz