Bob Colacello Quotes

Even the bad books I write are satisfying. I'm my least critical reader.

There are a lot of smart people being really thoughtful and writing really interesting things, but that isn't what I want to do. It's never felt like what I've been called to do. And I have to risk sounding really arrogant when I say that because I've gone to Ivy League schools and been privileged in all these ways in the world of ideas, but I'm not as smart as you think. I'm not really depending on what I learned in college to write my books. Those were just parts of my life experience.

Being trendy is dangerous. I've never been trendy, which is why I've never really fallen out of favour.

I was a pretty good fighter. But it was the writers who made me great.

If you don't appeal to kids, to the zeitgeist, you get thrown on the scrapheap.

I think I'll be flavor of the month when I'm in my fifties.

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

The only time I was ever approached to write a book was when I was most famous.

Good or bad, if people still talk about you it means that you have managed to stay relevant.

A lot of celebrities are afraid of being out of sight, out of mind. I'm the complete opposite.

If something is being written about a lot, there's a conversation there; there's a dialogue there. There's probably a reason for it that it resonates deeply in some way.

I never thought people would be remotely interested in my silly little life, but I'm really glad that they are.

I'm a sex symbol. Is that wild? It blows me away. I mean, I've always known it, I just figured nobody else did.

I never thought about making music because it has to be a hit. There are so many better singers out there who are better trained in music, but I am probably the chosen one... I have not discovered any formula for staying relevant.

I seem to be like a hero to people, it's crazy.

I see myself in everything I write. All the good guys are me.

Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author in the world. I love him so much. There's one book that informs me more than The Road - it's called Suttree. That book is a huge influence on me. I'm not smart enough to emulate him, but he inspires me. He never infiltrates my writing directly. He writes incredibly intelligently about people that are marginalized.

Tell me, is it possible to love someone who is not as smart as you are? ...But isn't it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love? ...Why is that? Because we want to know things, how the pieces fit. Talkers seduce, words direct us into corners. We want more than anything to grow and change. Brave new world.

I look at music now as just something to keep you relevant.

Well, I'd like to think I am, and I'd also like to think that we're all having a lot more fun getting older than we pretend. It was interesting to me when I first started working on this book that I'd mentioned that I was writing a memoir about aging and everybody would moan and groan and carry on.

I am never much interested in the effects of what I write....I seldom read with any attention the reviews of my...books. Two times out of three I know something about the reviewer, and in very few cases have I any respect for his judgments. Thus his praise, if he praises me, leaves me unmoved. I can't recall any review that has even influenced me in the slightest. I live in sort of a vacuum, and I suspect that most other writers do, too. It is hard to imagine one of the great ones paying any serious attention to contemporary opinion.

There's something not normal about you if you're writing a book about yourself, or about anything. And if you're the kind of person who can deal with being recognized by strangers and if that's tolerable or pleasing to you, and not immediately terrifying, that's not normal either.

For a stretch of time, I got really caught up in the idea that what people liked about my work was that I was a young guy who was trying to be cool by writing about young people and a certain kind of Bay Area culture that I was tangentially a part of.

Why do people write books that say it's better to be older than to be younger? It's not better. Even if you have all your marbles, you're constantly reaching for the name of the person you met the day before yesterday.

I'm not a celebrity or near celebrity. Sometimes people will say, "You're famous" and that stops me right there. What does fame mean? Fame is in the eye of the beholder. So, if somebody wants to call me 'famous', that's their business. I'm just me, a guy who messes around with airplanes and writes books that make sense to him.