Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!! Quotes

“Late in November, Lenny took off for his eagerly anticipated job in Chicago. It had been nearly a year since he played the chilly city, and those who hadn't seen him for that period, or even longer, were shocked at the change in his appearance. The once handsome, animated, brilliant performer and commentator was now a fat, bent, shabby-looking street loafer, a horribly dissipated, baggy-eyed, numb-fleshed junkie, with a tragic darkness in his eyes.”
― Albert Goldman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!!

“Sahl was never a great comic. His nervous, jabbing, keep-them-off-balance delivery was the strategy of a man who was not comfortable in front of an audience. His creative method -- a rapid scanning of the day's output of newspapers, magazines, and radio broadcasts -- was a recipe for superficiality or, at best, the kind of quick, shallow laugh triggered by a topical allusion. Sahl was always devoid of the two basic ingredients of great humor: imagination and soul. He could make fun of the latest Hollywood movies. He could stab at the pieties of his own class. He could take an abrupt insight into politics or wold events and phrase it neatly into a gag. What he could never do was suggest a world of living, breathing people behaving in ridiculous yet recognizably human patterns.”
― Albert Goldman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!!

“Everybody was pissed off in those days, but there were no socially acceptable outlets for hostility. "Hostile" was a word you heard constantly -- but it was a scolding word, like 'bad,' 'naughty,' or 'no-no.' All over this heavily psychoanalyzed country, people were saying to other people, 'Why are you being so hostile? . . . That's a hostile remark! . . . There's a lot of hostility behind something like that!' It was an incredible age, the fifties! An age of stifled violence obsessing about THE BOMB!”
― Albert Goldman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!!

“Chapter 9”
― Albert Goldman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!!

“at the core of whatever made this human atom pile smolder he wasn't cooking anymore. He was all bottled”
― Albert Goldman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!!

“Chapter 8 “America’s No. 1 Vomic” (Winchell)”
― Albert Goldman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!!

“Chapter 7 The Sickest of the Sick”
― Albert Goldman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!!

“Chapter 6 Open Up Those Golden Gates”
― Albert Goldman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!!

“Dope broke the back of this already moribund”
― Albert Goldman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce!!