The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money. A. J. Liebling More Quotes by A. J. Liebling More Quotes From A. J. Liebling The only way to write is well and how you do it is your own damn business. A. J. Liebling damn writing way No ascetic can be considered reliably sane. A. J. Liebling sane News is like the tilefish which appears in great schools off the Atlantic Coast some years and then vanishes, no one knows whither or for how long. Newspapers might employ these periods searching for the breeding grounds of news, but they prefer to fill up with stories about Kurdled Kurds or Calvin Coolidge, until the banks close or a Hitler marches, when they are as surprised as their readers. A. J. Liebling long years school I take a grave view of the press. It is the weak slat under the bed of democracy A. J. Liebling freedom media-control views Southern political personalities, like sweet corn, travel badly. They lose flavor with every hundred yards away from the patch. By the time they reach New York, they are like Golden Bantam that has been trucked up from Texas - stale and unprofitable. The consumer forgets that the corn tastes different where it grows. A. J. Liebling texas new-york sweet Henry Miller may write about revelers self-woven into a human hooked rug, because his ecstasy is solemn. A. J. Liebling woven self writing If a boxer ever went as crazy as Nijinsky all the wowsers in the world would be screaming 'punch-drunk.' Well, who hit Nijinsky? And why isn't there a campaign against ballet? It gives girls thick legs A. J. Liebling boxing crazy girl If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to boot yourself in the posterior. A. J. Liebling boots trying long It is impossible for me to estimate how many of my early impressions of the world, correct and the opposite, came to me through newspapers. Homicide, adultery, no-hit pitching, and Balkanism were concepts that, left to my own devices, I would have encountered much later in life. A. J. Liebling later-in-life opposites world There is a healthy American newspaper tradition of not taking yourself seriously It is the story you must take that way... And if you do take yourself seriously, according to this sound convention, you are supposed to do your best not to let anyone else know about it. (Like bed-wetting.) A. J. Liebling bed healthy sound It is an anomaly that information, the one thing most necessary to our survival as choosers of our own way, should be a commodity subject to the same merchandising rules as chewing gum. A. J. Liebling anomalies survival knowledge The country's present supply of foreign news depends largely on how best a number of dry goods merchants in New York think they can sell underwear. A. J. Liebling new-york country thinking Chicago seems a big city instead of merely a large place. A. J. Liebling bigs chicago cities The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down. A. J. Liebling eating impossible writing Forget that New Orleans is actually a little like the Combat Zone with French cooking, it still happens to be part of the great state of Louisiana where people play the political game the same way it's played in Lebanon. The place is one layer after another of tribes, factions and at least a million laughs. A. J. Liebling new-orleans games play I used to be shy about ordering a steak after I had eaten a steak sandwich, but I got used to it. A. J. Liebling used shy sandwiches The science of booby-trapping has taken a good deal of the fun out of following hot on the enemy's heels. A. J. Liebling taken fun enemy There is no concept more generally cherished by publishers than that of the Undeserving Poor. A. J. Liebling publishers undeserving poor My old friend looked at me with a new respect. He was discovering in me a capacity for hypocrisy that he had never credited me with before. A. J. Liebling old-friends hypocrisy capacity Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience. A. J. Liebling products cynicism inexperience
