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Sam Quinones

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Sam Quinones

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Calvin Trillin, Anton Chekhov, John LeCarre, Alma Guillermoprieto, Wil ...more

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Sam Quinones is a long-time journalist and author of 3 books of narrative nonfiction.

He worked for the LA Times for 10 years. He spent 10 years before that as a freelance journalist in Mexico.

His first book is True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx, published in 2001, a collection of nonfiction stories about drag queens, popsicle-makers, Oaxacan basketball players, telenovela stars, gunmen, migrants, and slain narco-balladeer, Chalino Sanchez.

In 2007, he published Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration. In this volume he tells stories of the Henry Ford of velvet painting, opera singers in Tijuana, the Tomato King of Jerez, Zacatecas, the stories of a young constru
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Sam Quinones Several are still in prison, which is where I found them. A few I've followed up with. The ones I contacted are back doing the menial dead-end jobs t…more Several are still in prison, which is where I found them. A few I've followed up with. The ones I contacted are back doing the menial dead-end jobs they did before they got into heroin, which are, for many, the only jobs available to them. So drugs meant in the end no real improvement in their lives, particularly as they spent their money frequently on parties and things that didn't do much to move them forward. Enrique, though, I have no spoken to since his release from prison.

Two of them that I spoke to did have qualms. They come from a small Mexican town, after all, where drugs are frowned on. But money does override a lot of troublesome moral questions. Enrique had many rationalizations for it - someone else would have sold this had it not been me, that sort of thing. One guy is very happy to be out of it, though he's back working jobs that lead nowhere. All his friends, brothers and in-laws are involved in heroin work, but he's happy to be away from it. (less)
Sam Quinones Sounds trite, but you have to write. It helps enormously to find a job that pays you to write - which is why journalism is so important. Like poetry, …moreSounds trite, but you have to write. It helps enormously to find a job that pays you to write - which is why journalism is so important. Like poetry, journalism also forces you, or should, to pay close attention to how you use words and express ideas. Also, don't think of any first draft you write - to a novel or an email - as done. Writing is rewriting - always.(less)
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Tell Your True Tale: Vol. 9

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More books by Sam Quinones…

Las Vegas’ Downtown Project & Tony Hsieh

I admire rich people who do something creative with their money instead of just buying more stuff.





Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappo, lives in Las Vegas and brought his company there, then started what’s known as the Downtown Project, which uses $350 million of his own money to revitalize what was the town’s main street before The Strip — this roughly in the 1930s, I’m told.





I was just in Las Vegas briefly a

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Published on January 10, 2020 14:50

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The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
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In 1988, I moved to Stockton, California for a job as the crime reporter for the Record, the town’s daily newspaper.

Stockton, in California's Central Valley, was surrounded by tomato fields and almond orchards, and vineyards up by Lodi. A robust farm
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Edward Hopper, 1882-1967  by Ivo Kranzfelder
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Early in his life, the painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967) went to Paris, which was where young artists of the time aspired to live. Impressionism and modern art were in vogue. Picasso, Matisse, and others.

I was struck reading this book that Hopper vi
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Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick
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Last Train to Memphis by Peter Guralnick
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I came up in the 1970s, and Elvis Presley was a cynical joke to me. He was fat, coddled, Las Vegas-y. He made bad movies rather than essential rocknroll.

Growing up in Southern California, I was deep into rock, roots music, R&B, country, but I never l
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Quotes by Sam Quinones  (?)
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“The front of the brain has to develop through mistakes. But the first reaction of the addicted person is to head back to the family: ‘Will you rescue me?’ Whatever the person’s rescued from, there’s no learning. There’s no experiences, no frontal brain development. They’re doing well and then some idea comes into their head and they’re off a cliff. It may not be a decision to use. Most relapse comes not from the craving for the drug. It comes from this whole other level of unmanageability, putting myself in compromising situations, or being dishonest, being lazy—being a fifteen-year-old.”
Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic

“Through all this, patients were getting used to demanding drugs for treatment. They did not, however, have to accept the idea that they might, say, eat better and exercise more, and that this might help them lose weight and feel better. Doctors, of course, couldn’t insist. As the defenestration of the physician’s authority and clinical experience was under way, patients didn’t have to take accountability for their own behavior.”
Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic

“The U.S. medical system is good at fighting disease, Cahana believes, and awful at leading people to wellness.”
Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic

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