Enjoy the best quotes of Keith Gessen. Explore, save & share top quotes by Keith Gessen.
“One changes, as a writer, fairly quickly; what you wrote six months or a year ago might not sound right anymore.”
Keith Gessen“One changes, as a writer, fairly quickly; what you wrote six months or a year ago might not sound right anymore.”
Keith Gessen“Perestroika was an impossible idea on the face of it. The Party was setting out to employ its structures of command to make the country, and itself, less command-driven. A system whose main afflictions were stagnation and inflexibility was setting out to change itself. Worst and probably intractable was the fact that people who had spent their lives securing power and individual leverage were expected to devise change that would dismantle the hierarchy of levers and might dislodge them. The system resisted change instinctively...”
Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia“It turned out that capitalism alone could make people not only rich and happy but also poor, hungry, miserable, and powerless.”
Masha Gessen, The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin“July 7, 1986: Montreux It is only now that I realize the importance of a biography. I mean I always have realized that I enjoy to read (and have learned many things from) the biographies of artists whom I admire. It is probably my main source of education. In the beginning of my “career” (what an awful word) I was misled by a teacher who thought the things I was writing to be pretentious and self important. Years later, when I read those things I wrote in 1978, it didn’t seem so pretentious for almost everything I wrote about “wanting to do,” I actually did in the four or five years that followed.”
Keith Haring, Keith Haring Journals“Keith was just bringing the glass to his lips when Adrian said, "Mmm. O positive, my favorite."Keith sprayed out the wine he'd just drunk and promptly started coughing. I was relieved that none got on me. jill burst into giggles, and Clarence stared at his glass wonderingly."Is it? I thought it was a cabernet sauvignon.""So it is," said Adrian, straight-faced. "My mistake.”
Richelle Mead“When she emerged, Keith was watching the tiny round window of the under-the-counter washing machine. "Put your clothes in for a wash," he said. "They were disgusting."Ginny always thought that the only way of getting clothes clean was by drowning them in scalding water and then whipping them around in a violent centrifugal motion that caused the entire washing machine to vibrate and the floor to shake. You beat them clean. You made them suffer. This machine used about half a cup of water and was about as violent as a toaster, plus it stopped every few minutes, as if it were exhausted from the effort of turning itself.Sluff, sluff, sluff sluff. Rest. Rest. Rest.Click.Sluff, sluff, sluff, sluff. Rest. Rest. Rest."Who thought to put a window on a washing machine?" Keith asked. "Does anyone just sit and watch their wash?"You mean, besides us?""Well," he said, "yeah. Is there any coffee?”
Maureen Johnson, 13 Little Blue Envelopes“I mean, you want the truth as you wanna hear it? I can't do that. You couldn't afford me.”
Keith Moon“There will always be con artists, I know that,” Warren admitted. “But that doesn’t mean clairvoyance isn’t real.”
Keith Steinbaum“Good God, Keith.""Yes, I've talked to Him too and I'm still waiting on his Guidance...”
John Grisham, The Confession“Keith Richards is a man without regret. When I ask him if—given the chance to do it all over again—he’d start taking heroin, he doesn’t pause. “Oh yes. Yes. There was a lot of experience in there—you meet a lot of weird people, different takes on life that you’re not going to find if you don’t go there. I loved a good high. And if you stay up, you get the songs that everyone else misses, because they’re asleep. There’s songs zooming around everywhere. There’s songs zooming through here right now, in the air.”
Caitlin Moran, Moranthology