An Odd Book Quotes

“And it is probably that only on the brink of eternity most of us become conscious how silly and useless hate is.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“it breaks my heart when I think of those last few moments when the thought came to him that he could best serve his friends by removing himself from among them.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“In no instance were large gobs of similar copy quoted…and after all, why should the most successful columnist in the business take the copy of the most unsuccessful—copy that was long ago proved unsalable.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“a sign in a West Twenty-Ninth Street restaurant that read, ‘Don’t hesitate to ask for credit, as we have the most polite way of refusing.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“supreme minstrels of the air whose homely philosophy of the commonplace has made them beloved in almost every household in the land.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“Just four months after the show first aired, it had more than forty million listeners every single evening.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“Movie theaters began turning the show on in the lobby when it aired, to keep people from going home to listen to the radio.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous. The seekers for prizes tend to labor not for inherent excellence but for alien rewards; they tend to write this, or timorously to avoid writing that, in order to tickle the prejudices of a haphazard committee.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“I have found that the gunman, the thief, the prostitute, the confidence man and all the odd human flotsam spewed up from a great city’s depths are searching for happiness and missing it,”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“none of Dr. Copeland’s tips would cure someone suffering from pernicious anemia.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“Henry McIntyre met Cobb at the train station and insisted his son’s “close friend” should stay at his house instead of in a hotel. The temptation to eat a home-cooked meal was so great, Cobb took Henry McIntyre up on the offer, even though he didn’t actually know Odd.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“During his two-year term, Hunt introduced the inspections of tenement houses, appointed school nurses, provided food inspection and dental services for school children, closed illegal gambling halls, introduced a plan to improve city sewers, introduced the regulation of loan sharks who preyed on the poor, and settled several strikes.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“July 1905 issue of McClure’s Magazine was titled “Ohio: A Tale of Two Cities.” He pointed out the corruption in Cincinnati and called its residents “craven cowards.”91 Steffens compared Cleveland, “the best-governed city in the United States,” with Cincinnati, which he called “the worst.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“No one is the villain of his own story,”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“We are not Republicans, not Democrats, not Greenback and not Prohibitionists. We simply intend to support good men and condemn bad ones, no matter what party they belong to. We shall tell no lies about persons for love, malice or money. It is no part of a newspapers business to array itself on the side of this or that party, or fight, lie or wrangle for it.77”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“No Street will ever compare to our Court. It was the capital of Boyville when the world was corduroyed and there seemed to be an answer for everything.”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York

“Professor of entomology Jeffrey Lockwood wrote that the insects streamed overhead for five days. The swarm was 1,800 miles long and at least 110 miles wide, and covered an area equal to that of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont combined.5”
― R. Scott Williams, An Odd Book: How the First Modern Pop Culture Reporter Conquered New York