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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
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Contracts
Reading
Readers
Lying
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More quotes by Steve Almond

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The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.
Steve Almond
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All language is an aspiration to music.
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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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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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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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I do think, as crazy as it sounds, that sports is an addiction and that it should be accorded some of the same supports as any other addiction.
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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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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Part of what depresses me so much about football is that it's so clearly about exploiting people, most of them poor boys of color, because of what they can do to entertain us, not because we have any genuine concern for them as people.
Steve Almond
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There's something incredibly liberating about a holiday that encourages children to take candy from strangers
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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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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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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Most forms of rage, after all, are only sloppy cloaks for grief.
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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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
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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.
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 good teacher, after all, wields the authority of a parent with none of the psychological baggage. The best of them are semi-mysterious figures whose wisdom seems boundless and whose approval helps us discover who we are.
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