Mark Harris > Quotes

“The sky was just beginning to light up a little, the quiet time when all the air is clean and you can hear birds, even in the middle of New York City, the time of day you never see except by accident, and you always tell yourself, "I must get up and appreciate this time of day once in awhile," and then you never do. Don't ask me why.”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“From here on in I rag nobody.”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“From here on in, I rag nobody”
― Mark Harris

“On October 23, 1963, Barefoot in the Park opened on Broadway. Just before his extremely nervous cast took the stage, Nichols gathered them for a final pep talk. “Everybody relax,” Redford says he told them. “You know your positions, you know your laughs, you know your lines, you know where the comfort zones are. So enjoy yourselves, and remember: Everything depends on tonight.”
― Mark Harris, Mike Nichols: A Life

“Do you think you are going to live forever? Is life so long you rather rag somebody than be nice to them?”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“There is no time to say, “Well, I been a heel all week but I will be better to him beginning Monday” because Monday might never come.”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“When your roomie is libel to die any day on you you do not think about bonus clauses, and that is the truth whether anybody happens to think so or”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“he went with me to The Dayton Company and I bought a storm coat with a fur collar and earmuffs and gloves, $70, all deductible, business. I would not of needed them if I was not in Minneapolis and would not of been in Minneapolis except on business.”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“The number of things I do not remember or maybe never knew or am only in the foggiest haze about is quite amazing.”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“Probably everybody be nice to you if they knew you were dying," he said.
"Everybody knows everybody is dying," I said. "That is why people are nice. You all die soon enough, so why not be nice to each other?”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“Maybe he thought up a cure by now which those jugheads out in Rochester, Minnesota, ain’t heard about yet. What kind of a place is that to have a goddam hospital, anyhow, out there in the wilds of nowhere? Does a man not freeze his ass off by the time they get him in bed?”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“When I die,” he says, “the paper will write in their headline THE SON OF A BITCHES OF THE WORLD HAVE LOST THEIR LEADER,”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“called Goose Williams. I could not of sold Goose anything, and I knew it, but if I didn’t at least try I wouldn’t of had the nerve to list the trip deductible.”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“A Place in the Sun”
― Mark Harris, Mike Nichols: A Life

“It is not a matter of me marrying either you or a gas pumper. It is a matter of marrying a man. I do not much care what he does, so long as he is a man. You are 21,” she said, “and under the law you are a man, and your height and weight is that of a man. In the bed you are a man,” and she smiled a little. “But you are losing your manhood faster then hell. Pretty soon in bed will be the only place you are a man. But that is not manhood. Dogs and bulls and tomcats do the same. Yes, you are losing your manhood and becoming simply an island in the empire of Moors.”
― Mark Harris, The Southpaw

“At the time, Sills said, “the main thing we experienced was the repression of any kind of deviant behavior under the guise of anti-Communism.” None of them could understand why there weren’t more people, especially artists, fighting it. “A pall of McCarthyism lay over the land,” said Bernie Sahlins, a producer at Playwrights, “and all you heard on TV were mother-in-law jokes.”
― Mark Harris, Mike Nichols: A Life

“The story of an alienated young man cosseted by privilege, smothered by the comforts that surround him, and determined to listen to himself had come to feel personal in a way he had never imagined.”
― Mark Harris, Mike Nichols: A Life

“Everybody knows everybody is dying,” I said. “That is why people are nice. You all die soon enough, so why not be nice to each other?”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly

“I will keep a book,” he said. “Either in your head,” I said, “or better still on paper for awhile. You already have terrific power. But power plus brains is the difference between nobody and somebody.”
― Mark Harris, Bang the Drum Slowly