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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.

Steve Almond

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Steve Almond
Age: 58
Born: 1966
Born: October 27
Journalist
Literary Critic
Writer
CA
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More quotes by Steve Almond

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At about the age of ten, during a late summer visit to Sears to buy school clothes, I became aware of the concept of candy by the pound.
Steve Almond
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Football is the most successful cult, in terms of members and profits, in human history. Oh wait, there's also religion.
Steve Almond
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Every now and then, I'll run into someone who claims not to like chocolate, and while we live in a country where everyone has the right to eat what they want, I want to say for the record that I don't trust these people, that I think something is wrong with them, and that they're probably - and this must be said - total duds in bed.
Steve Almond
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Authors should be as involved with the marketing of their books as they want to be. No more, no less. I happen to recognized, quite early on, that no one was going to buy my book if I didn't do everything I could to let them know that the book existed.
Steve Almond
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I happen to love football so much and hate myself for loving it.
Steve Almond
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Football offers us a sanitized spectacle of combat that has a clear resolution, which we need more and more today given our incoherent overseas wars.
Steve Almond
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We are all, in the private kingdom of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend. Someone who isn’t embarrassed by our emotions, or her own, who recognizes that life is short and all that we have to offer, in the end, is love.
Steve Almond
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The truth is, every sport has been turned into a huge, nihilistic business.
Steve Almond
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You've got all these parents who are projecting their pathologies of fear onto their kids and those kids are understandably messed up. Tragedies happen and that you have to allow kids to experience their own fear and guilt and sorrow. It's the cover-up that really screws people over. Unfortunately, America specializes in cover-ups.
Steve Almond
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People in long-term, monogamous relationships are crushed by the expectation that a partner is going to provide everything they are looking for and wondering why they are dissatisfied when they have four of the ten boxes checked.
Steve Almond
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Football is Lotto for kids from economically vulnerable neighborhoods.
Steve Almond
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We need books...because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.
Steve Almond
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If you want to fight a cult, you've got to form a cult.
Steve Almond
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Most forms of rage, after all, are only sloppy cloaks for grief.
Steve Almond
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It is in these moments of tender and ridiculous nostalgia that I know something inside me is still broken.
Steve Almond
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Much as I love stories, I think I'll only be satisfied with myself as a writer if I'm able to produce a novel that feels publishable. The books that truly take me away - for weeks at a time - are all novels.
Steve Almond
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Why are people so fascinated by how to eat Valomilks?’ She said, ‘Well, Dad, they’re round and they’re messy. But that’s what makes them fun. Once we get older we’re not supposed to be messy anymore. But for one moment when you’re eating a Valomilk, it’s okay to be messy again.
Steve Almond
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Obama said, basically, I wouldn't let any son of mine play football, though I do watch. And that struck me as remarkable! It's like he's saying, yeah, let some other set of parents or guardians put their boys up for that kind of punishment (and for my amusement). But not mine! It's just abject hypocrisy from a guy who should know better.
Steve Almond
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At the end of night, before you close your eyes, be content with what you've done and be proud of who you are.
Steve Almond
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A lot of what I'm having to do to get myself weaned from football is really limit what media I allow myself to consume. And it's a big drag. But it's also the only way to kick the habit.
Steve Almond