George V. Higgins > Quotes

“This life’s hard, but it’s harder if you’re stupid.”
― George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle

“Nobody ever got started on a career as a writer by exercising good judgment, and no one ever will, either, so the sooner you break the habit of relying on yours, the faster you will advance. People with good judgment weigh the assurance of a comfortable living represented by the mariners’ certificates that declare them masters of all ships, whether steam or sail, and masters of all oceans and all navigable rivers, and do not forsake such work in order to learn English and write books signed Joseph Conrad. People who have had hard lives but somehow found themselves fetched up in executive positions with prosperous West Coast oil firms do not drink and wench themselves out of such comfy billets in order in their middle age to write books as Raymond Chandler; that would be poor judgment. No one on the payroll of a New York newspaper would get drunk and chuck it all to become a free-lance writer, so there was no John O’Hara. When you have at last progressed to the junction that enforces the decision of whether to proceed further, by sending your stuff out, and refusing to remain a wistful urchin too afraid to beg, and you have sent the stuff, it is time to pause and rejoice.”
― George V. Higgins

“If you do not seek to publish what you have written, then you are not a writer and you never will be.”
― George V. Higgins

“It was darker than a carload of assholes.”
― George V. Higgins

“Never tell your reader what your story is about. Reading is a participatory sport. People do it because they are intelligent and enjoy figuring things out for themselves.
(advicetowriters)”
― George V. Higgins

“The customary blizzard of pigeons wheeled briefly across the walk and settled back around an old lady who fed them from a large, wrinkled, paper bag. “I heard a guy on television the other night,” Dillon said. “He was talking about pigeons. Called them flying rats. I thought that was pretty good. He had something in mind, going to feed them the Pill or something, make them extinct. Trouble is, he was serious, you know? There was a guy that got shit on and probably got shit on again and then he got mad. Ruined his suit or something, going to spend the rest of his life getting even with the pigeons because they wrecked a hundred-dollar suit. Now there isn’t any percentage in that. There must be ten million pigeons in Boston alone, laying eggs every day, which will generally produce more pigeons, and all of them dropping tons of shit, rain or shine. And this guy in New York is going to, well, there just aren’t going to be any of them in this world any more.”
― George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle

“Jackie Brown at twenty-six, with no expression on his face, said that he could get some guns.”
― George V. Higgins, The Friends of Eddie Coyle

“Sooner or later, I know human nature, he's gonna take a bath and it's gonna take the business to get him out of it.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“It's one thing to do it. It's another thing to go around testifying in court about it.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“I once thought Utopia was just a matter of harnessing all the manpower and money that a fourth-term Senator pisses away.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“It's like playing Monopoly in this town. Nobody's using real money. It's all a fight between expense accounts.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“Has it occurred to you recently, Sam," Hammer said, "that the net effect of what we're doing is stroking a guy's ego, and that's all?"
"No," Barry said, "as a matter of fact, Steve, it hasn't."
"Well, Sam," Cavanaugh said, "maybe it should.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“Then you have to keep your mouth shut,' I said, 'everywhere you go. You either keep track of the talk,' and he started telling me he didn't think half of it was true anyway, and I said: 'Yeah, but you don't know which half, and there's no way to find out unless you want to specialize in all that dirty gossip. So you either don't talk, or you get in trouble because you keep forgetting that people that're going to bed with each other still have time to say something now and then, even though their clothes are off at the same time.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“You told me to use my own judgment," Cavanaugh said. "Jess is like the rest of the horses: they're getting thirsty, but they won't drink till they're ready.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“He pretends he invented integrity, when all he is is a natural-born prick that cultivated his congenital advantage.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“He's very, very conservative, which I guess happens to you if you spend twenty years of your life running the electric company.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“Again let me emphasize," Franklin said, "that we speak not of things as they are, but of things as they are perceived. Our practice obliges us to satisfy the semipublic and public predilection for selecting real leaders by comparison of the height, breadth, and symmetry of the shadows they cast, and not upon the assessment of their actual stature.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“Yup," Richmond said, nodding. "he's got an actual record. They've arrested him in two states for writing bad checks. Never did any time, of course. He made restitution. It's not as though he needed the money. But he was convicted, and now he's running one of those fake ego-massage parlors for guys that think a felony conviction's some kind of distinction that makes them better human beings than us pedestrian types.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“Why the hell is it that the first thing you do, if you're a Wasp and you got principles, is scowl all the time?”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“That's what I mean, that's why they don't do it anymore. It makes a helluva lot more sense, but nobody does it because it'd cost too much money up front and nowadays the whole thing is, you put as much money into it as it takes to make it stand up straight for maybe six years and then you depreciate the ass off of it in five and you sell the fuckin' thing to somebody else. That's the way it works now, and if you don't know that everybody figures that you're just an asshole and there isn't any point in talking to you anyway.”
― George V. Higgins, The Rat on Fire

“He's not a bad guy. He just didn't get any luck and by the time he figured out what was happening to him it was too late to do anything about it.”
― George V. Higgins, The Rat on Fire

“He doesn't run my life," she said. "I run my life. I work for Springer in New York because I like being in New York and working for Springer. I also like being married to you. In small doses.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“Now I'm getting old," Franklin said. "I'm not old, but I'm getting old, and many of the people I've cherished are dead, or very old. The people I told you about, who were disappointed, have been using up their days as inexorably as those who never even hoped, bearing the burden of the illusion that things in this country are of infinite perfectibility, and the weight, heavier still, of the knowledge that they acted upon that illusion, expecting better things, and did not get them.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“When Howard Davidson meets his Maker, he'll be content to burn in hell, just as long as the lord says: 'Senator Davidson, go to hell.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“They're worse'n mixed doubles for causing divorces.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“I give you guys credit: when you're liberal, you're liberal as hell, except if it's whether we oughta sell some more Phantoms to a warmongering nation that mongers with UJA money, but when you decide that you're gonna be bigots, there isn't another group in the world that can touch you for it. You're the best believers there is.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill

“But that is just another way of saying that government, at its best, has never managed more than a marginally survivable diet for those who would otherwise starve, hasty and meager medical treatment for those who would otherwise die a little sooner, perhaps without pain, without treatment, moderately efficient sewage disposal, garbage removal and excellent fire protection, and a few circuses to amuse those alert enough to seek out or invent their own amusements. There is no limit on the amount of misery.”
― George V. Higgins, A City on a Hill