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One of the things about me is that I actually had marginally middle-class living from writing. For years and years, I actually wrote so much through the '70s and '80s that I made a living. And very rarely have I had to take another job. And now it's impossible for anybody coming up to make such a living. They've pissed in the temple, you know?

Richard Meltzer

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Richard Meltzer
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: May 11
Journalist
Music Critic
Musical Artist
New York City
New York
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Rarely
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Wrote
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Anybody
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Impossible
Marginally
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More quotes by Richard Meltzer

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If I'm very drunk, I can improvise. But generally speaking, no. Generally speaking, almost all of my work is material that was first done on the printed page. And the shorter ones that you might call poems, I had a stretch from '79, '80, for five or six years, where I wrote a lot of poetry as such. Simply because I was asked to.
Richard Meltzer
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The first five years as a writer, I didn't know how to write at all. I couldn't write my way out of a white paper bag. And yet, I did some remarkable things. And later on, there were periods where I got this mission to find an articulate voice with rewrites and all. There were periods where I was as dense as Faulkner.
Richard Meltzer
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Those which might have some depth are corny enough to be hokey, and almost hokey enough to be folky, since folky is already so hokey anyhow.
Richard Meltzer
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And the whole online thing is like, I just, that to me is a world that doesn't exist. It's not something you could touch or lick or smell. And as my eyes get worse, it's very hard to read. And there's no money in it. I mean, it's like they pay, like the best you can go is 1970 prices.
Richard Meltzer