Richard Hell Quotes

we still have the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building and the Woolworth Building, but it just seems like part of the nature of New York, that it's always shifting.

Things always change, and New York teaches you that.

Another thing that's good about writing to describe a situation or a state of consciousness is that you can finally get it right. That was my intention, and that's always interesting.

In fact I thought life was pretty much a losing proposition, and I didn't mind saying so.

The purpose of rock n' roll is to convince girls to pay money to get close to you.

I'm usually alone or asleep, at home.

I do everything halfway, a thing of which adults disapprove, but things done halfway are deceptive, and in a class of their own – for instance, the sun is really twice its size.

A memoir takes some particular threads, some incidents, some experience from a person's life and gives an account of it.

I felt just overwhelmed by input: the Vietnam War and the collapse of the '60s and the proliferation of media' it just felt like everything was too much to handle and you just tuned out.

I shake my head and the tiny acrobats fall like spangles, like the cool rain on another planet, down to the inside of my feet.

A memoir is a book about some particular thread or theme or moment in a person's life, whereas an autobiography is the entire life.

Nothing lasts in New York. Everything's always changing in really obvious ways.

There are characters in [punk] that do deliberately go as far as they can in certain kind of taboo areas.

I'm someone who's really susceptible to tears.

Poetry's always dead, you know? You don't realize how good poetry is until 15 years later.

I love a good play, but they're too hard to find.

I'm not into this memoir craze that's been going on for 20 years now and doesn't seem to ever let up. People just indiscriminately say "memoir" now when it's a person writing about their own life.

I decided I wanted out because it was killing me, and I couldnt see where to go with it that wouldnt be fatal.

I never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.

I like writing non-fiction - and when you pick a [non-fiction] subject, it saves you the hassle of coming up with a plot.

I've come to think of myself as a writer of books.

An autobiography is a life story. It starts when you're born and continues until the end.

I believe in people treating each other with respect.