Quotes by Thomas Mallon - Page 1 | QuoteForever

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'National Review' came along, in '55, at the moment when American conservatism most needed it.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Conservatism
Review
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I actually think that Bandbox, by far the silliest of my books, is the best constructed of them.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Book
Thinking
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I actually think that 'Bandbox,' by far the silliest of my books, is the best constructed of them.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Constructed
Silliest
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Letters had always defeated distance, but with the coming of e-mail, time seemed to be vanquished as well.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Defeated
Distance
Letters
Mail
Vanquished
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My house in Connecticut is very quiet, and when I'm trying to concentrate, I don't even allow the cat inside my second-floor study.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Cat
Connecticut
Quiet
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Ive always got a novel under way, but if I try to work on it every day, exclusively, I falter. So I always keep more than one thing going.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Novel
Trying
Way
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I've always got a novel under way, but if I try to work on it every day, exclusively, I falter. So I always keep more than one thing going.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Work Always Day
Falter
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Cell phones, alas, have pretty much ruined train travel, which I used to love. I could read or even sketch notes for what I was working on.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Alas
Cell Phone
Cells
Notes
Phones
Ruined
Cell
Cell Phones
Sketch
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The romantic appeal of solar sailing has ensured that its advocates consistently come from the worlds of both science fiction and science fact.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Consistently
Fiction
Sailing
Science Fiction
World
Advocate
Appeal
Solar
Worlds
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The green appeal of solar sailing - traveling by light, once chemical propellants have done their dirty job of orbital insertion - ought to be powerful.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Green
Ought
Sailing
Appeal
Chemical
Solar
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I've long been interested in the role of 'minor characters' in major events. This has been the focus of a lot of the fiction and nonfiction I've written.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Nonfiction
Minor
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With 'Fellow Travelers,' I think I was consciously trying to imagine what my own life as a gay man might have been like if I'd been born exactly 20 years earlier.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Life Man Gay
Earlier
Fellow
Travelers
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I have a picture of the Pont Neuf on a wall in my apartment, but i know that Paris is really on the closet shelf, in the box next to the sleeping bag, with the rest of my diaries.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Paris
Sleep
Wall
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Of all Americans who have appeared on the nation's postage stamps, Ayn Rand is probably the only one to have thought that the United States government has no business delivering mail.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Delivering
Mail
Postage
Stamps
United States Government
All Americans
Appeared
No Business
Rand
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I'm not convinced that Nixon would have survived in office if he'd burned the tapes, but I do believe he would have served out his presidency if he'd never made them in the first place.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Burned
Presidency
Survived
First Place
Nixon
Served
Tapes
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The late Tom Wicker's biography of Nixon, called 'One of Us,' is really quite good: you see the biographer discovering dimensions of sympathy for his subject that he hadn't expected to feel.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Sympathy
Dimensions
Discovering
Good Feel See
Biography
Nixon
Tom
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Stars, of course, are too hot to support life, so wherever life might exist in the universe, it has to be on planets or moons that are warmed, but not incinerated, by the stars they travel around.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Planets
Wherever
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Bobby Kennedy's conduct toward Lyndon Johnson was childish and despicable. As the years went on, he displayed nasty, self-pitying, and messianic qualities that would have made him a dangerously authoritarian president.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Despicable
Johnson
Nasty
Authoritarian
Bobby
Childish
Dangerously
Displayed
Lyndon
Lyndon Johnson
Qualities
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I was raised - and still consider myself to be - Catholic, though I'm non-practicing and haven't fulfilled my Easter duty since sometime during the Nixon years. I'm assailed by all kinds of stimulating doubts, but I do believe in God.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Easter
Catholic
Fulfilled
Raised
God Myself Believe
Consider
Doubts
Stimulating
Nixon
Sometime
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I think that the worst form of naivete can be extreme cynicism. If you think that nobody comes to Washington to do any good whatsoever, that is almost as bad as being starry-eyed and thinking that they are all here to advance democracy.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Naivete
Extreme
Advance
Whatsoever
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American Secretaries of State have typically been more buttoned up than bon vivant, but John Quincy Adams's diplomatic successes - bigger than anything Presidential or legislative that he achieved - still surprise a student of his personality.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Personality
Presidential
Students
Surprise
Achieved
Legislative
Secretaries
Successes
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I'd have to say that Nixon feels like the public figure who most dominated my life - from the time I went to fourth grade wearing a Nixon-Lodge button in the fall of 1960, through my college years, which overlapped with Kent State, Cambodia, the China trip and all the rest.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Cambodia
Fourth
Life Time My Life
Button
Dominated
Grade
Nixon
Public Figure
Trip
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One's politics are part of one even when one is writing. But if I want to say anything about the state of civil society, I will write an essay. The responsibilities you feel as a novelist are literary ones, I think, not civic ones. And I think politicians are interesting to write about.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Civil Society
Civic
Politicians
Essay
Literary
Responsibilities
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I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about; read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history, and not to actually get back to the original sources.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Historical Fiction
Stoke
History People Back
Biography
Sources
Tendency
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One decision I made in writing 'Henry and Clara' was that I would keep Lincoln's appearances and any dialogue by him to an absolute minimum, because I think readers don't quite believe it when novelists have Lincoln walking around and saying things. They just know they're in the presence of stage machinery.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Dialogue
Machinery
Minimum
Novelists
Absolute
Appearances
Lincoln
Presence
Readers
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I like writing dialog but don't think I'd be much good at a screenplay. I once had to write a treatment for a novel of mine - a condition of its being optioned by a movie producer - and I turned out something pretty lackluster. So my inclination would be to stay out of the way of an experienced screenwriter.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Inclination
Novel
Treatment
Condition
Dialog
Experienced
Mine
Producer
Screenplay
Turned
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For almost every novel I've written, I've read the daily newspaper of the time almost as if it were my current subscription. For 'Two Moons,' which was set in 1877, I think I read just about every day of the 'Washington Evening Star' for that year. For 'Henry and Clara,' I read the 'Albany Evening Journal' of the time.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Albany
Evening
Journal
Subscription
Current
Newspaper
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John Quincy Adams ranks with Jimmy Carter on the roster of ex-presidential redemption. Instead of completing a biography of his father, he let himself be elected to the House, where he spent nine terms in Whiggish opposition to the Democrats, supporting a national bank and a protective tariff and internal improvements.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Carter
Completing
Jimmy
Nine
Protective
Redemption
Bank
Biography
Democrats
Elected
Internal
Jimmy Carter
Ranks
Supporting
Tariff
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The Czech Republic, severed from its old Slovak half, sits in apparent landlocked contentment, inside the European Union but outside the troubled Euro Zone, set into the new Continental mosaic like one of the small sturdy paving stones, just a few inches square, that form the sidewalks under the visitor's ambling feet.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Contentment
Czech
Czech Republic
Euro
European Union
Feet
Half
Inches
Paving
Republic
Stones
Zone
Apparent
Mosaic
Union
Severed
Square
Troubled
Visitor
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Nixon had been to China. He had been to Russia doing arms negotiation. And so, he was on his way toward what happened in November, which was an electoral win with 49 states. And the sheer unnecessariness of the Watergate break-in is something that must have tormented him and his allies in all of the years that followed.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Allies
Arms
Negotiation
November
Russia
Sheer
Watergate
Tormented
Electoral
Followed
His Way
Nixon
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The cosmic game changed forever in 1992. Before then, logic told us that there had to be other planets besides the nine (if you still count poor Pluto) in our solar system, but until that year, when two astronomers detected faint, telltale radio signals in the constellation Virgo, we had no hard evidence of their existence.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Changed
Cosmic
Evidence
Existence
Forever
Logic
Nine
Planets
Pluto
Poor
Radio
Signals
Solar System
Besides
Count
Faint
Solar
System
Virgo
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My prescription for writer's block is to face the fact that there is no such thing.... Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something. And then, with a lot of work, make it better. It's a question of having enough will and ambition, not of hoping to evade this mysterious hysteria people are always talking about.
Thomas Mallon / Novelist
Ambition
Block
Writing
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