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Lawrence Grobel

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Born

The United States

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http://www.lawrencegrobel.com

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October 2012

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Lawrence Grobel (www.lawrencegrobel.com) is a novelist, journalist, biographer, poet and teacher. Five of his 31 books have been singled out as Best Books of the Year by Publisher’s Weekly and many have appeared on Best Seller lists. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. PEN gave his Conversations with Capote a Special Achievement Award. The Syndicat Francais de la Critique de Cinema awarded his Al Pacino their Prix Litteraire as the Best International Book of 2008. James A. Michener called his biography, The Hustons, “a masterpiece.” His The Art of the Interview is used as a text in many journalism schools. Writer’s Digest called him “a legend among journalists.” Joyce Carol Oates dubbed him “ Lawrence Grobel (www.lawrencegrobel.com) is a novelist, journalist, biographer, poet and teacher. Five of his 31 books have been singled out as Best Books of the Year by Publisher’s Weekly and many have appeared on Best Seller lists. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction. PEN gave his Conversations with Capote a Special Achievement Award. The Syndicat Francais de la Critique de Cinema awarded his Al Pacino their Prix Litteraire as the Best International Book of 2008. James A. Michener called his biography, The Hustons, “a masterpiece.” His The Art of the Interview is used as a text in many journalism schools. Writer’s Digest called him “a legend among journalists.” Joyce Carol Oates dubbed him “The Mozart of Interviewers” and Playboy singled him out as “The Interviewer’s Interviewer” after publishing his interviews with Barbra Streisand, Dolly Parton, Henry Fonda and Marlon Brando.
He has written for dozens of magazines and has been a Contributing Editor for Playboy, Movieline, World (New Zealand), and Trendy (Poland). He served in the Peace Corps, teaching at the Ghana Institute of Journalism; created the M.F.A. in Professional Writing for Antioch University; and taught in the English Department at UCLA for ten years. Since 2007 he has served as a jury member at the annual Camerimage Film Festival in Poland. He has appeared on CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, The Charlie Rose Show, NPR’s The Treatment, Marc Maron”s WTF and Adam Carolla’s podcasts, and in two documentaries, Salinger and Al Pacino’s Wilde Salome. His book, You, Talking to Me, highlights the lessons he’s learned from interviewing. His memoir, You Show Me Yours, takes him from the streets of Brooklyn to Marlon Brando’s island in Tahiti. Yoga? No, Shmoga! is his satirical take on staying healthy through stretching. His fiction includes 2 novels (Catch a Fallen Star, Begin Again Finnegan), a novella (The Black Eyes of Akbah), and 3 books of short stories (The Narcissist, Stuck, and Schemers, Dreamers, Cheaters, Believers). His most recent book is a memoir of his three years in the Peace Corps (Turquoise). His books are all available on Amazon and on his website. He is married to the artist Hiromi Oda and they have two daughters.
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Lawrence Grobel’s books

Average rating: 3.89 · 2,746 ratings · 245 reviews · 63 distinct works • Similar authors

	Al Pacino by Lawrence Grobel (Goodreads Author), Al Pacino (Foreword) 3.97 avg rating — 1,049 ratings — published 2006 — 35 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Conversations With Capote 3.97 avg rating — 639 ratings — published 1985 — 28 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Conversations With Brando 3.89 avg rating — 286 ratings — published 1987 — 16 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Art of the Interview: Lessons from a Master of the Craft 3.58 avg rating — 200 ratings — published 2004 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Hustons 4.01 avg rating — 152 ratings — published 1989 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Conversations with Ava Gardner 3.72 avg rating — 76 ratings — published 2013 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Meryl Streep o sobie by Lawrence Grobel (Goodreads Author), Marta Szelichowska (Translator) 2.42 avg rating — 53 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Above The Line: Conversations About The Movies 3.67 avg rating — 30 ratings — published 2000 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Endangered Species: Writers Talk About Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives 4.05 avg rating — 22 ratings — published 2001 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	You, Talking To Me: Lessons I Learned Along the Celebrity Trail 4.54 avg rating — 13 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Lawrence Grobel…

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Lawrence Grobel's Blog

Competing with Midgets: A Tall Order

After a book I wrote was accepted for publication, I received an eight-page questionnaire from the company’s publicist. She wanted more information about me than my doctor asks for. Who was the book’s primary audience? Who did I know in the media who might be interested in reviewing the book? Have I ever appeared on TV or radio? Have I ever done book signings, and if so, where? Give the name and a Read more of this blog post »

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Published on October 07, 2012 12:47 • Tags: book-promotion, book-tour, mancow, radio-interviews, why-write

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Quotes by Lawrence Grobel (?)

“Нека ти кажа какво е анонимността за един актьор. За мен е много важна. Затова се дърпам толкова много от интервюта.Когато един път научиш лични неща за един актьор, започваш да разгадаваш работата му, докато я наблюдаваш.
... Дори когато ходя на театър, у мен има желание да не отивам зад кулисите.Просто защото искам да запазя в съзнанието си само видяното. Не искам да разбивам илюзията.”
― Lawrence Grobel, Al Pacino

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“Ако ти е писано да ходиш по опъната жица, това и правиш. Няма да си нарисуваш линия върху пода я. Рано или късно се качваш там горе, на високото.”
― Lawrence Grobel, Al Pacino

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“So I can only conclude that American democracy inherently does not want good leadership. We always passed over the very great men we had like Daniel Webster, John Calhoun, Henry Clay, John Fremont, and the people after the Civil War like Carl Shurz. We pass them up because we don’t want first-class men in that position, we want somebody who is a stupid bum like us. We’re afraid of good leadership until a time of crisis,”
― Lawrence Grobel, Conversations with Michener

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¡ POETRY ! — 22615 members — last activity Nov 19, 2025 04:25PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more

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