Bruce Jay Friedman > Quotes

“How can I write a book? you might say. I've got nothing to say. Don't let that stop you. Very few writers have anything to say. The trick is to see how long you can conceal that from the reader. The most successful writers are ones who've been able to get away with it for the greatest number of pages and years.”
― Bruce Jay Friedman

“Along with death trek and survival stories, yarns about tough cops who had embarked on county cleanups were surefire; also guaranteed to please were pieces that had anything to do with islands—storming them, hiding out on them, buying them at bargain rates, becoming GI king of them. (My favorite, written by the great Walter Kaylin, had to do with a seaman who took charge of one and went about ruling it while sitting on the shoulders of a weird little chum with whom he had washed ashore.)”
― Bruce Jay Friedman, Weasels Ripped My Flesh!: Two-Fisted Stories From Men's Adventure Magazines of the 1950s, '60s & '70s

“You have got to abstract yourself so that you present a faceless picture to society.”
― Bruce Jay Friedman, Stern

“Anthony Powell.”
― Bruce Jay Friedman, The Peace Process: A Novella and Stories

“seemed to him that every two seconds the fates arranged for him to say goodbye to someone. All of it, of course, leading up to the final send-off.”
― Bruce Jay Friedman, The Peace Process: A Novella and Stories

“(“I homogenize saw you on the street last night”),”
― Bruce Jay Friedman, Stern