J R Moehringer Quotes

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

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

Your ancestral homeland is Queens, fuckface. ~ 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

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

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

Hell freezing over?
I don't know. But the devil's definitely wearing a sweater. ~ 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

To be a man, a boy must see a man. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

History is the narrative of people searching for a place to go. ~ 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

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

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

You think you choose the subjects of your books. But sometimes, in ways you don't know, the books choose you. ~ 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

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

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

To simply hold a book, to imagine what it might say, would be a comfort. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course many bars in Manhasset, like bars everywhere, were nasty places, full of pickled people marinating in regret. ~ 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The romantic chivalric tradition takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man's eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

So was I,' said Frodo, 'and so I am. We're going on a bit too fast. You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: "Shut the book now, dad; we don't want to read any more."' 'Maybe,' said Sam, 'but I wouldn't be one to say that. Things done and over and made into part of the great tales are different. Why, even Gollum might be good in a tale, better than he is to have by you, anyway. And he used to like tales himself once, by his own account. I wonder if he thinks he's the hero or the villain? ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I seem to see ahead, in a kind of way. I know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can't turn back. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

There was a little corner of his mind that was still his own, and light came through it, as though a chink in the dark: light out of the past. It was actually pleasant, I think, to hear a kindly voice agin, bringing up memories of wind, and trees, and sun on the grass, and such forgotten things. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

May the hair on his toes never fall out! all praise to his wine and ale! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The world has changed. I see it in the water. I feel it in the Earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, For none now live who remember it. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I'll get there, if I leave everything but my bones behind, ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Money is like manure. It stinks when you pile it; it grows when you spread it ~ J.R.D. Tata

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

For you have been deluded by Saruman. Many of you have got death as the reward of your trust in him; but had you conquered, little better would your wages have been. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Frodo: If you ask it of me, I will give you the One Ring. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Gandalf answered angrily: "I brought him, and I don't bring things that are of no use. Either you help me to look for him, or I go and leave you here to get out of the mess as best you can yourselves. If we can only find him again, you will thank me before all is over. Whatever did you want to go and drop him for, ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

My father left ... but I tell my mom - and I told my mom this when I was a kid - I said, 'You know what, Mom? Good thing he left because you're a strong woman.' ~ J. R. Martinez

In my illustrious career as a university student,
I turned in over 100 papers so that one day,
in the end, I got 1 paper in return. ~ J.R. Rim

Out into the staff quarters. Over to the entrance to the movie theater. Tohr stopped dead. "If this is another Beaches marathon, I'm going to Bette your ass until you can't sit down."
"Aw, look at you! Trying to be finny."
"Seriously, if you have any compassion in you at all, you'll let me go to bed - "
"I have peanut M&M's up there."
"Not my style."
"Raisinets."
"Feh."
"Sam Adams."
Tohr narrowed his eyes. "Cold?"
"Downright icy."
Tohr crossed his arms over his chest and told himself he was not pouting like a five-year-old. "I want Milk Duds."
"Got 'em. And popcorn."
With a curse, Tohr yanked open the door and ascended into the dimly lit red cave. ~ J.R. Ward

Great heart will not be denied. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

But the Elves were not so lightly to be caught. As soon as Sauron set the One Ring upon his finger they were aware of him; and they knew him, and perceived that he would be master of them, and of an that they wrought. Then in anger and fear they took off their rings. But he, finding that he was betrayed and that the Elves were not deceived, was filled with wrath; and he came against them with open war, demanding that all the rings should be delivered to him, since the Elven-smiths could not have attained to their making without his lore and counsel. But the Elves fled from him; and three of their rings they saved, and bore them away, and hid them.

Now these were the Three that had last been made, and they possessed the greatest powers. Narya, Nenya, and Vilya, they were named, the Rings of Fire, and of Water, and of Air, set with ruby and adamant and sapphire; and of all the Elven-rings Sauron most desired to possess them, for those who had them in their keeping could ward off the decays of time and postpone the weariness of the world. But Sauron could not discover them, for they were given into the hands of the Wise, who concealed them and never again used them openly while Sauron kept the Ruling Ring.

Therefore the Three remained unsullied, for they were forged by Celebrimbor alone, and the hand of Sauron had never touched them; yet they also were subject to the One. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

A dog has one aim in life... to bestow his heart. ~ J.R. Ackerley

When you were the son of evil, there was little you couldn't do, own, or kill, and yet her mortal self was an elusive trophy he could touch, but not put on his shelf.
This made her rare. This made her precious.
This made him ... love her. ~ J.R. Ward

Maybe I should put down fifteen ones. You're probably used to that from your stripper days! ~ J.R. Scott

The only thing that had tethered her to the earth had been him and it was strange, but she felt welded to him on some core level now. He had seen her at her absolute worst, at her weakest and most insane, and he hadn't looked away. He hadn't judged and he hadn't been burned.
It was as if in the heat of her meltdown they had melted together.
This was more than emotion. It was a matter of soul. ~ J.R. Ward

Because love in its many forms always endured. It was the infinite. The eternal. That which sustained. ~ J.R. Ward

The fate of Men after death, maybe, is not in the hands of the Valar, nor was all foretold in the Music of the Ainur. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

He [Vishous] was all need, no ease. ~ J.R. Ward

Literature works from mind to mind and is more progenitive. It is at once more universal and more poignantly particular. If it speaks of bread or wine or stone or tree, it appeals to the whole of these things, to their ideas; yet each hearer will give to them a peculiar personal embodiment in his imagination. Should the story say 'he ate bread', the dramatic producer or painter can only show 'a piece of bread' according to his taste or fancy, but the hearer of the story will think of bread in general and picture it in some form of his own. If a story says 'he climbed a hill and saw a river in the valley below', the illustrator may catch, or nearly catch, his own vision of such a scene; but every hearer of the words will have his own picture, and it will be made out of all the hills and rivers and dales he has ever seen, but especially out of The Hill, The River, The Valley which were for him the first embodiment of the word. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

But do not despise the lore that has come down from distant years; for oft it may chance that old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Today, as never before, the pariah is the only man with the chance to think for himself. Everyone else is relentlessly compelled by peer pressures. Everyone constantly blackmails everyone. The threat of ostracism easily molds the soft democratic soul into fashionable shapes. The out-of-fashion individual, the outcast (perhaps the only real human being remaining) eats out of some dumpster on the edge of town.
-J.R.Nyquist "Origins of the Fourth World War ~ J.R.Nyquist

It was a good story, that of yours," said Beorn, "but I like it still better now I am sure it is true." The Hobbit ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

And it came to pass that in the hour of defeat Aragorn came up from the sea and unfurled the standard of Arwen in the battle of the fields of Pelennor, and in that day he was first hailed as king. And at last when all was done he entered into the inheritance of his fathers and received the crown of Gondor and the Sceptre of Arnor; and at midsummer in the year of the Fall of Sauron he took the hand of Arwen Undomiel, and they were wedded in the city of the kings. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In rode the Lord of the Nazgûl, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.

All save one. There waiting, silent and still in the space before the Gate, sat Gandalf upon Shadowfax: Shadowfax who alone among the free horses of the earth endured the terror, unmoving, steadfast as a graven image in Rath Dínen.
"You cannot enter here," said Gandalf, and the huge shadow halted. "Go back to the abyss prepared for you! Go back! Fall into the nothingness that awaits you and your Master. Go!"
The Black Rider flung back his hood, and behold! he had a kingly crown; and yet upon no head visible was it set. The red fires shone between it and the mantled shoulders vast and dark. From a mouth unseen there came a deadly laughter.
"Old fool!" he said. "Old fool! This is my hour. Do you not know Death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!" And with that he lifted high his sword and flames ran down the blade.

And in that very moment, away behind in some courtyard of the city, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed, recking nothing of war nor of wizardry, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn.
And as if in answer there came from far away another note. Horns, horns, horns, in dark Mindolluin's sides they dimly echoed. Great ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

On all this Bilbo looked with misery. He had taken his stand on Ravenhill among the Elves - partly because there was more chance of escape from that point, and partly (with the more Tookish part of his mind) because if he was going to be in a last desperate stand, he preferred on the whole to defend the Elvenking. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The appalling destruction and misery of this war mount hourly: destruction of what should be (indeed it is) the common wealth of Europe, and the world, if mankind were not so besotted, wealth the loss of which will affect us all, victors or not. Yet people gloat to hear of the endless lines, 40 miles long, of miserable refugees, women and children pouring West, dying on the way. There seems no bowels of mercy or compassion, no imagination, left in this dark diabolic hour. By which I do not mean that it may not all, in the present situation, mainly (not solely) created by Germany, be necessary or inevitable. But why gloat! We were supposed to have reached a stage of civilization in which it might still be necessary to execute a criminal, but not to gloat, or to hang his wife and child by him while the orc-crowd hooted. The destruction of Germany, be it 100 times merited, is one of the most appalling world-catastrophes. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Gandalf, dwarves and Mr. Baggins! We are met together in the house of our friend and fellow conspirator, this most excellent and audacious hobbit - may the hair on his toes never fall out! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Sounds like you want a date, Lash, " Qhuinn barked. "Good deal, 'cause you keep that shit up, you're going to get fucked, buddy. ~ J.R. Ward

V sat back on his heels, crossed his arms, and continued to look down at the little bag of vampire. And what do you know. That infant sonofabitch glared right back at him. Vishous ~ J.R. Ward

And so it was settled. Sam Gamgee married Rose Cotton in the spring of 1420 (which was also famous for its weddings), and they came and lived at Bag End. And if Sam thought himself lucky, Frodo knew that he was more lucky himself; for there was not a hobbit in the Shire that was looked after with such care. When the labours or repair had all been planned and set going he took to a quiet life, writing a good deal and going through all his notes. He resigned the office of Deputy Mayor at the Free Fair that Midsummer, and dear old Will Whitfoot had another seven years of presiding at Banquets. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

She felt sorry for the female who had been driven to such traits. Who had kept herself apart from all emotions. The female had been born under a curse. The female had done evil and had evil done unto her. The female hardened herself, her mind and her emotions becoming steel. The female had been wrong about that locking down, that self containment. It was not a case of strength, as she always told herself. It was strictly survival ... ~ J.R. Ward

Arrow! Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and I have always recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

DEDICATED TO YOU:
You,
a "brother" indeed.
I think you are right where you are supposed to be-and I'm not the only one who feels that way. ~ J.R. Ward

Against delay. Against the way that seems easier. Against refusal of the burden that is laid on me. Against - well, if it must be said, against trust in the strength and truth of Men. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

You're so very naked," she whispered against his shoulder.
He smiled into her hair. "So are you. ~ J.R. Ward

Gandalf sat at the head of the party with the thirteen dwarves all round: and Bilbo sat on a stool at the fireside, ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

A ruler who discerning justice refuseth to it the sanction of law, demanding abnegation of rights and self-sacrifice, will not drive his subjects to these virtues, virtuous only if free, but by unnaturally making justice unlawful, will drive them rather to rebellion against all law. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

[If] you are ready enough to pull my knitting to pieces, but provide none of your own, the only sock is a sock in the jaw! ~ J.R. Ackerley

She thought about what happily-ever-afters were about, and decided that true love didn't mean effortless, and ever-after wasn't about cruise control. You started with the attraction, and then you opened your heart and your soul - but all that, which was no small thing, just got you to first base. There were many, many other trips to take to deeper levels of greater acceptance and understanding. That was where you found the happy. And the ever-after was the work you were always willing to put in to stay close, to learn, and to grow as people together. ~ J.R. Ward

There goes a lord who tamed a wild shieldmaiden of the North! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien