Stephen Fried > Quotes

“Life & Death
energy & Peace
if I stoped today
it was fun
Even the terrible pains that have burn me & scarred my soul it was worth it for having been allowed to walked where I've walked. Which was to hell on earth Heaven on earth, back again, into, under far in between, through it, in it over it and above it.”
― Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia

“here we are, without our families, totally out of our heads, and we don’t know where on earth we are. That was the feeling of the early seventies—nobody knew where they were.”
― Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty

“In Italy everything is more romantic. I can also be in bed with ten girls, but I love these ten girls.”
― Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty

“Invoking the story of David, Davies implored his students to “imbibe and cherish a public spirit. Serve your generation. Live not for your selves, but the public. Be the servants of the Church; the servants of your Country; the servants of all.” He exhorted them to “esteem yourselves” not by how much “more happy, honourable and important” you can become but by how much “more useful you are!”
― Stephen Fried, Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father

“It was kind of sad. We got her on the cover, but I could see the change in her beauty. There was an emptiness in her eyes.”
― Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty

“Don’t do it,” the patient said. “Even if she wants it, don’t let her do it. I used to be a model. You don’t want your kid to be a model.”
― Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty

“St. Louis was desperately in need of some good news. Like many cities along the Mississippi, it had been ravaged by the monumental flood that spring, which broke 145 levees between Missouri and Louisiana and became one of the worst natural disasters in the country’s history. More than twenty-six thousand square miles of land were flooded, killing 246 people and displacing 600,000 more, many of whom had to live in squalor in refugee camps; 41,487 buildings were destroyed, 162,017 homes flooded, and over $100 million ($1.2 billion) in crops and farm animals were lost.”
― Stephen Fried, Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West--One Meal at a Time

“I didn’t build into a model. I just sort of became one.”
― Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty

“The girl looked like walking death,” Nancy recalled. “To leave somebody that sick in a bus terminal? I just didn’t get it.”
― Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty

“She scared me a little bit,” recalled Harry King. “There was something about her that made me feel uneasy. I used to say it to Way: ‘She has a demon inside of her.”
― Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty

“Life & Death energy & Peace if I stoped today it was fun Even the terriable pains that have burn me & scarred my soul it was worth it for having been allowed to walked where I’ve walked. Which was ta hell on earth Heaven on earth back again, into, under, far in between, through it, in it over and above it.”
― Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty

“I think that’s the nature of many relationships anyway, most relationships. There’s that element of….you would call it prostitution.”
― Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy of Supermodel Gia

“Next to alcoholism, what intrigued and horrified Rush most in his rounds were the patients locked in the basement cells. He felt immediately that the circumstances these patients lived under were absolutely unacceptable. But the “lunatics,” who most people still viewed as damned rather than diseased, presented a unique and troubling situation. They weren’t truly in the hospital to be treated, because nobody knew for sure what their treatment should be. They were in the basement primarily to keep them safe from society, and society safe from them. The first step in improving their situation would simply involve warehousing them more benevolently. But even that proposition was challenging; nobody seemed to have the slightest idea how to proceed.”
― Stephen Fried, Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father

“she fondly remembered being caught laying out several thousand Quaaludes on the Persian rug in her bedroom in her grandmother’s apartment: “She looked in and said, ‘Clean this stuff up and vacuum that carpet.’ I loved my grandmother.”
― Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty

“Yes, you could say that I did. It kind of creeps up on you and catches you in a world that’s, y’know, none that anyone will ever know except someone that has been there.”
― Stephen Fried, Thing of Beauty