Quotes by Gay Talese

“Most journalists are restless voyeurs who see the warts on the world, the imperfections in people and places. gloom is their game, the spectacle their passion, normality their nemesis.”

“The reporter wrote with the hope that he would get a by-line in the Times, a testimony to his being alive on that day and all the tomorrows of microfilm.”

“News, if unreported, has no impact. It might as well have not happened at all.”

“Even after they had stopped modeling for Playboy and had settled down with other men to raise families of their own, [Hugh] Hefner still considered them his women, and in the bound volumes of his magazine he would always possess them.”

“He was a sex junkie with an insatiable habit.”

“The real problem is what to do with the problem-solvers after the problems are solved.”

“The Park Avenue of poodles and polished brass; it is cab country, tip-town, glassville, a window-washers paradise.”

“Youre right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I dont think Id be waving those flags in Gods face if I were you. ... A condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. Itll bring about terrorist bombs. Itll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.”

“He was a true showman. He had not only the talent, but he had the ability to promote that talent. Thats one reason why I think hes still relevant after all these years.”

“I write non-fiction, and he didnt influence me. He was one of the great writers, but I dont know that he influenced a generation.”

Whatever influence Bullaro’s normally cautious character might have exerted over the passions of his penis were now nonexistent, and he unhesitatingly followed her and quickly undressed.

Men admitted to being endlessly fascinated with the naked female form; they appreciated women in a detached, impersonal way that women, even those women who were flattered by such attention, rarely understood.

in a male-dominated world, Reich suggested, there was an “economic interest” in the continued role of women as “the provider of children for the state” and the performer of household chores without pay.

Departing from Freud’s exclusively verbal analysis, Reich studied the body as well as the mind, and he concluded after years of clinical observation and social work that signs of disturbed behavior could be detected in a patient’s musculature, the slope of his posture, the shape of his jaw and mouth, his tight muscles, rigid bones, and other physical traits of a defensive or inhibiting nature. Reich identified this body rigidity as “armor.

He believed that all people existed behind varying layers of armor which, like the archaeological layers of earth itself, reflected the historical events and turbulence of a lifetime. An individual’s armor that had been developed to resist pain and rejection might also block a capacity for pleasure and achievement, and feelings too deeply trapped might be released only by acts of self-destruction or harm to others. Reich was convinced that sexual deprivation and frustration motivated much of the world’s chaos and warfare.

While the moral force of Judeo-Christian tradition and the law have sought to purify the penis, and to restrict its seed to the sanctified institution of matrimony, the penis is not by nature a monogamous organ. It knows no moral code. It was designed by nature for waste, it craves variety, and nothing less than castration will eliminate the allure of prostitution, fornication adultery, or pornography.

Interestingly, the historic case of 1868 in England that first defined obscenity-known among lawyers as the Hicklin decision- evolved out of the prosecution of a pamphlet describing how priests were often so sexually aroused while hearing women’s confessions that they sometimes masturbated and even copulated with their repentant subjects in the confessional.

The penis, often regarded as a weapon, is also a burden, the male curse.

Too many people were obsessed with their heads and were alienated from their bodies, Perls believed, adding: “We have to lose our minds and come to our senses.

Group nudity could also be personally beneficial, according to psychologist Abraham M. Maslow, who believed that nudist camps or parks might be places where people can emerge from hiding behind their clothes and armor, and become more self-accepting, revealing, and honest.