Arthur Graham’s Reviews > The Rum Diary > Status Update

Everybody quits -- you'll quit. Nobody worth a shit can work here.

With the palms zipping past and the big sun burning down on the road ahead, I had a flash of something I hadn't felt since my first months in Europe -- a mixture of ignorance and a loose, what the hell kind of confidence that comes on a man when the wind picks up and he begins to move in a hard straight line toward an unknown horizon.

I have no valid complaint against hustlers, no rational bitch, but the act of selling is repulsive to me. I harbor a secret urge to whack a salesman in the face, crack his teeth and put red bumps around his eyes.

All manner of men came to work for the News: everything from wild young Turks who wanted to rip the world in half and start all over again -- to tired, beer-bellied old hacks who wanted nothing more than to live out their days in peace before a bunch of lunatics ripped the world in half.