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By the time I received my doctorate in American studies in 1957, I was in the twisted grip of a disease of our times in which the sufferer experiences an overwhelming urge to join the 'real world.' So I started working for newspapers.

Tom Wolfe

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Tom Wolfe
Age: 88 †
Born: 1930
Born: March 2
Died: 2018
Died: May 14
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Non-Fiction Writer
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Reporter
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Richmond
Virginia
Thomas Kennerly
Jr. Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly Tom Wolfe
Jr.
Thomas Kennerly Wolfe
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Even hostile parodies admit from the start that the target has a distinct voice.
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I don't think journalists should talk about whom they're voting for.
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I'm a great believer in outlines.
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I was sitting in my office when someone called to tell me two light planes had collided with the World Trade Centre. I turned on my television, before long there was this procession of people of all kinds, walking up the street. What I remember most was the silence of that crowd there was no sound.
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It's not just that reporting gives you a bigger slice of life, gives - lends verisimilitude to what you are doing - it's that it feeds the imagination.
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Miami is a melting pot in which none of the stones melt. They rattle around.
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Driving a stock car does not require much handling ability, at least not as compared to Grand Prix racing, because the tracks are simple banked ovals and there is almost no shifting of gears. So, qualifying becomes a test of raw nerve - of how fast a man is willing to take a curve.
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Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: You're either on the bus...or off the bus.
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If a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested.
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Sometimes we don't even realize what we really care about, because we get so distracted by the symbols.
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People complain about my exclamation points, but I honestly think that's the way people think. I don't think people think in essays it's one exclamation point to another.
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don't just describe an emotion, arouse it, make them experience it, by manipulating the symbol of the emotion, and sometimes we have to come into awareness through the back door.
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So many people in this country have a dual loyalty. They have loyalty to America, but they also are determined to have their parade up Fifth Avenue once a year... a Cuban parade or a Puerto Rican parade - many other countries. So they really don't forget.
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Dear Mother, I meant to write you before this and I hope you haven't been worried.... I have met some Beautiful People and...
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Frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can't see a painting.
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A cult is a religion with no political power.
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My father was the editor of an agricultural magazine called 'The Southern Planter.' He didn't think of himself as a writer. He was a scientist, an agronomist, but I thought of him as a writer because I'd seen him working at his desk. I just assumed that I was going to do that, that I was going to be a writer.
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The world was simply and sheerly divided into 'the aware', those who had the experience of being vessels of the divine, and a great mass of 'the unaware', 'the unmusical', 'the unattuned.
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His hair has the long jesuschrist look. He is wearing the costume clothes. But most of all, he now has a very tolerant and therefore withering attitude toward all those who are still struggling in the old activist political ways...while he, with the help of psychedelic chemicals, is exploring the infinite regions of human consciousness.
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