Clifford Irving > Quotes

“And also don’t forget, the reason opportunity is often missed is that it usually comes disguised as hard work.”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“fishing equipment and lawn mowers, bought the goods in one branch of Kmart and then returned them in other branches for a full refund. Like most crooks with a workable scam, Virgil Freer did it once”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“Could be. Unlikely, but”
― Clifford Irving, Final Argument

“From the outset of the program to solve the Jewish question there had arisen certain psychological problems for the executioners. Once the classic method of the firing squad had been dismissed as inappropriate, it had been replaced by a single bullet in the back of the neck. The victim would kneel before a ditch that he himself had dug, the pistol would be fired, and he would fall into his grave. Simple and quick. This had been tried for a few months in some marshy fields outside Warsaw, but the SS soldiers who did the job began to complain of lack of sleep. “They had bad dreams,” Vogl said. “They truly suffered.” It was the necks. The muscular necks of the men—the slender white necks of the young women. The wrinkled necks of the old that reminded a man of his parents… the frail necks of children, even the fleshy little necks of babies. The memory of the necks began to haunt the executioners. The soldiers began to miss the targets at point-blank range. A bullet would plow into a shoulder, or slice off an ear, or even strike the earth. “Then”
― Clifford Irving, The Angel of Zin

“He was beginning to grasp the human equation: to be intelligently alive means to cherish what you’ve got, fight for what you want, spurn what you don’t want, and forget about what you can’t have.”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“If you take big risks there are big rewards.”
― Clifford Irving, AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD HUGHES: Confessions of an Unhappy Billionaire

“at first we love the illusion of perfection. Later we come to love imperfections, because they signal vulnerability: and what we love, we yearn to protect.”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“Life was an ongoing war against unseen and usually undefined enemies.”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“the reason opportunity is often missed is that it usually comes disguised as hard work.”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“You got the firing squad?" "No, that’s inhuman—those guys can miss and they gutshoot you. You hang a man, that knot can slip and he can strangle. Electric chair, he sizzles, been known to catch fire. Gas chamber, he pukes and yells. Texas is more modern. Here we drug a man, then inject cyanide into a vein. They say it doesn’t hurt. No one’s ever come back to say yea or nay." Pedro”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“Life moved on like a river, and water could not long remember the bruise it had received from a rock upstream.”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“OLD AGE AND TREACHERY WILL OVERCOME YOUTH AND SKILL.”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“Yiddish is the common language of Jews.” “You all speak it? Write it?” “All speak it.” She explained that it was a folk language, born in the Rhineland in the twelfth century. “Like a bastard—a German father, a Hebrew mother. The Jews spoke German, but they wrote it with Hebrew letters. When they moved eastward into the Pale, they added Polish, Russian, Lithuanian. They began to speak it, too. Anyone with an education can also write it.” “You’re”
― Clifford Irving, The Angel of Zin

“on the list of priorities my ass is number one, and my ass is also number two. My soul’s in a distant third place.”
― Clifford Irving, Daddy's Girl: The Campbell Murder Case

“buzz in his head was wonderfully liberating,”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“Do what has to be done, he thought. Do it quickly and well. You’re a professional. Pay the price… whatever it may be. Head”
― Clifford Irving, The Angel of Zin

“Except for the three grave sins of murder, incest and idolatry, it was axiomatic in Halakhah that every commandment of the Torah might be violated to save a human life. But the rabbi also knew the mitzvah that commanded a Jew to be unafraid of any danger in the proclamation of his true faith. “‘Let”
― Clifford Irving, The Angel of Zin

“But he was a stranger and we tend to believe whatever we first hear about strangers.”
― Clifford Irving, Daddy's Girl: The Campbell Murder Case

“I realize now that the basic function of prisons like Danbury is not merely to warehouse a man but to break his adult male spirit — his machismo, if you will — and reduce him to the psychological level of an obedient child. Basic techniques are: Physical removal to isolated areas (Allenwood, Danbury, etc.) which weakens or severs close emotional ties to family and friends. Segregation of all natural leaders. Use of cooperative prisoners as leaders. Use of informers. Placing individuals into new and ambiguous situations for which the standards are kept deliberately unclear, and then putting pressure on the men to conform and blindly obey authority in order to win favor and a reprieve from pressure and the ambiguity. Rewarding submission and subserviency. Building a group conviction among the prisoners that they’ve been abandoned by, and are almost totally isolated from, the social order.”
― Clifford Irving, Clifford Irving's Prison Journal

“at first we love the illusion of perfection. Later we come to love imperfections, because they signal vulnerability: and what we love, we yearn to protect. He”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“Why do women have cunts?" "I can’t imagine." "So that men will talk to them.”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“and”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“A good read is one of the amazing pleasures offered to us by civilization.”
― Clifford Irving, Final Argument

“...to be intelligently alive means to cherish what you've got, fight forwhat you want, spurn what you don't want, and forget about what you can't have...”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“IF YOU WOULD HAVE A MAN STAY AS HE IS, THEN TREAT HIM AS HE IS. IF YOU WOULD HAVE A MAN CHANGE, THEN TREAT HIM AS THE PERSON YOU WOULD WANT HIM TO BECOME.”
― Clifford Irving, Final Argument - A Florida Courtroom Thriller

“Mexicans have a fundamental belief in the doomed quality of humankind’s finest schemes. Why hurry fate?”
― Clifford Irving, Daddy's Girl: The Campbell Murder Case

“was beginning to grasp the human equation: to be intelligently alive means to cherish what you’ve got, fight for what you want, spurn what you don’t want, and forget about what you can’t have.”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“Why do politicians have one more brain cell than horses do?" Riddles were her favorites, he guessed. He said that he didn’t know why. "So they won’t shit on the street during parades." He”
― Clifford Irving, Trial

“dog’ll hunt.” We were southerners and spoke the same language. This was not a visiting lecturer in jurisprudence but a man in the trenches. Suddenly I wanted to be there with him, under fire. I shook Beldon Ruth’s hard hand, and I took the job he offered me. When I passed the bar exam I married Toba, and we moved into an apartment on Neptune Beach, forty minutes from the courthouse in downtown Jacksonville.”
― Clifford Irving, Final Argument

“Bless your little cotton socks,” he said. He threw me a kiss and handed me the case file.”
― Clifford Irving, Final Argument