71 Quotes by Steve Almond

But something occurred to me as I sped through that dirty shroud of fog, something Vonnegut has been trying to explain to the rest of us for most of his life. And that is this: Despair is a form of hope. It is an acknowledgment of the distance between ourselves and our appointed happiness. At certain moments, it is reason enough to live.

At the end of night, before you close your eyes, be content with what you've done and be proud of who you are.

Something is funny, most of all, because it's true, and because the velocity of insight into this truth exceeds our normal standards. Something is funny because it's outside our accepted boundary of decorum. Something is funny because it defies our expectations. Something is funny because it offers a temporary reprieve from the hardship of seeing the world as it actually is. Something is funny because it is able to suggest gently that even the worst of our circumstances and sins is subject to eventual mercy.

All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.

At the end of night, before you close your eyes, be content with what you’ve done and be proud of who you are.

There’s something incredibly liberating about a holiday that encourages children to take candy from strangers.

The single biggest reason I got my stories taken in various literary magazines – and I want to stress this – is because I refused to give up. Period.

The answer is that we don’t choose our freaks, they choose us.

At what point do we admit that the NFL’s true economic function is to channel our desire for athletic heroism into an engine of nihilistic greed?