Drew Nellins Smith Quotes

“It might have been the real reason I went out there at all, to hear all the nice things guys had to say when they got you alone, when they earned their shot in a booth with you.”

“When considering a candidate for office, almost right up until they enter the polling booth and sometimes even in the booth itself, most voters rely more on what they see and hear themselves in real time than on facts, history, logic, or learned experience.”

“When I take on a design project, I have to jet from the bookstore to the hardware shop to the lamp store and back again just to collect a small portion of the many items I need to fill a home. But, when you hit the flea market, they're all right there. From booth to booth, you have the bases covered.”

“Holy mama llama. That’s Nathanial Stone. Nathanial Stone is sitting in my booth. Nathanial Stone is in the Finewhile Diner sitting in my booth. I’m supposed to wait on Nathanial Stone. I’m going to make a fool out of myself. I just know it. I can feel it coming. Crap.”

“Where is it written in the Constitution that because a guy played football, he has the automatic right to sit in that booth? How hard is football? If I've spent thirty-five years as a sportswriter, you think I don't know you get six for a touchdown? You think I don't know that? You think I don't know you get three for a field goal? C'mon, c'mon. And I can actually speak English okay, so that would be a difference between me and a guy who spent his whole life playing football. Now, not all of them are like that, but it's that thinking that says, "We have divine right of booth." No, you don't. No you don't.”

“The heroin flowing through me, I thought about the last time I saw my father alive. He was drunk and overweight in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and curling into myself on the bed I thought: What if I had done something that day? I had just sat passively in a restaurant booth as the midday light filled the half-empty dining room, pondering a decision. The decision was: should you disarm him? That was the word I remember: disarm. Should you tell him something that might not be the truth but would get the desired reaction? And what was I going to convince him of, even though it was a lie? Did it matter? Whatever it was, it would constitute a new beginning. The immediate line: You’re my father and I love you. I remember staring at the white tablecloth as I contemplated saying this. Could I actually do it? I didn’t believe it, and it wasn’t true, but I wanted it to be. For one moment, as my father ordered another vodka (it was two in the afternoon; this was his fourth) and started ranting about my mother and the slump in California real estate and how “your sisters” never called him, I realized it could actually happen, and that by saying this I would save him. I suddenly saw a future with my father. But the check came along with the drink and I was knocked out of my reverie by an argument he wanted to start and I simply stood up and walked away from the booth without looking back at him or saying goodbye and then I was standing in sunlight. Loosening my tie as a parking valet pulled up to the curb in the cream-colored 450 SL. I half smiled at the memory, for thinking that I could just let go of the damage that a father can do to a son. I never spoke to him again.”

“We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book. "No one sees the barn," he said finally. A long silence followed. "Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others.We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies." There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides. "Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism." Another silence ensued. "They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.”

“I think I have done well, though I am abandoned, with the curse of Cain upon me.”

“If we are to better the future we must disturb the present.”

“The most terrifying thing in the world was having to give a speech at my girlfriend's wedding. I was physically shaking and sweating the entire time.”