Top George Plimpton Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

George Plimpton Biography

George Plimpton

George Ames Plimpton (March 18, 1927 – September 25, 2003) was an American journalist, writer, literary editor, actor and occasional amateur sportsman. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. He was also famous for "participatory journalism" which included competing in professional sporting events, acting in a Western, performing a comedy act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and playing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur.

Read about George Plimpton in Wikipedia

Random Authors

George Plimpton Quotes

Golf cannot be played in anger, or in any mood of emotiional excess. Half the golf balls struck by amateurs are hit if not in rage surely in bewilderment, or gloom, or in cynicism, or even hysterically - all of those emotional excesses must be contained by the professional. Which is why balance is one of the essential ingredients of golf. Professionals invariably trudge phlegmatically around the course - whatever emotions are seething within - with the grim yet placid and bored look of cowpokes, slack-bodied in their saddles, who have been tending the same herd for two months.

Emotional, Golf, Look, Rage, Saddles, Two

Rick Bass is one of the best writers of his generation.

Generations, Bass, Generation, Rick, Writers

He still has the same way of calling to me, as if I'm still new to him, as if he has yet to get over me.

Calling, Get Over, Same, Way

I have never been convinced there's anything inherently wrong in having fun.

Convinced, Fun, Having Fun, Inherently

I remember being awed by it - the uniqueness and nicety of style - and I suspect I was a bit jealous because we were more or less of the same generation.

Fear, Jealous, Style, Uniqueness, Same

As happens with people who love a thing too much, it destroys them. Oscar Wilde said, 'You destroy the thing that you love. ' It's the other way around. What you love destroys you.

Oscar, Oscars, People, Said, Too Much, Wilde

Well, I have to write. A lot of people forget that. They think I’m sort of crazy baffoon who can’t make up his mind what to do in life

Baffoon, Crazy, Forget, Think, Thinking, Writing

Art has something to do with the arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

Arrest, Art, Attention, Distraction, Midst

It is also one of the pleasures of oral biography, in that the reader, rather than editor, is jury.

Biographies, Editors, Jury, Oral, Pleasure, Reader

I never understood people who don't have bookshelves.

Bookshelves, People, Understood

Give me good books, good conversations, and my Trek Y-Foil, and I shall want for nothing else.

Book, Cycling, Give, Giving, Nothing, Trek

The smaller the ball used in the sport, the better the book.

Book, Golf, Smaller, Sport, Sports, Used

It's like people always say, Well, does sport teach you anything in life? It teaches you certain things, but it doesn't teach you other things. It doesn't teach, as I say, very much about marriage, very much about how to make a living, any of those things.

Doe, Like, Living, People, Sports

The New York Times published the guest list on the front page. The masks were a brilliant concept.

Brilliant, Guest, Guests, New York, Pages, Times

You do not cut a check in the state of Kansas to John Doe, executioner. The executioner is paid in cash so there's no trail to him

Cutting, Kansas, Doe, Executioner, Cash, Check

At the base of it was the urge, if you wanted to play football, to knock someone down, that was what the sport was all about, the will to win closely linked with contact.

Down, Football, Knock, Sports, Urge, Winning

My favorite monologue in the book is Kate Harrington's story of her relationship with Truman.

Book, Favorite, Kate, Relationship, Stories, Truman

The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of time itself--the pitcher dawdling on the mound, the skier poised at the top of a mountain trail, the basketball player with the rough skin of the ball against his palm preparing for a foul shot, the tennis player at set point over his opponent--all of them savoring a moment before committing themselves to action.

Basketball, Dawdling, Moment, Player, Skin, Sports