Russell Baker
Russell Baker
Russell Wayne Bakeris an American writer known for his satirical commentary and self-critical prose, as well as for his Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography Growing Up. He was a columnist for The New York Times from 1962 to 1998, and also hosted the PBS show Masterpiece Theatre from 1992 to 2004...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMemoirist
Date of Birth14 August 1925
CityMorrisonville, VA
CountryUnited States of America
pain father real
After that [father's death] I never cried with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sense that any happiness that came my way might be the prelude to some grim cosmic joke.
airports railroads towns
A railroad station? That was sort of a primitive airport, only you didn't have to take a cab 20 miles out of town to reach it.
adversity happy-life unhappy
I've had an unhappy life, thank God.
writing people literature
There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems, but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business, possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance.
couple home tree
What the New Yorker calls home would seem like a couple of closets to most Americans, yet he manages not only to live there but also to grow trees and cockroaches right on the premises.
new-beginnings opportunity people
When sudden death takes a president, opportunities for new beginnings flourish among the ambitious and the tensions among such people can be dramatic, as they were when President Kennedy was killed.
firsts half educator
Life seemed to be an educator's practical joke in which you spent the first half learning and the second half learning that everything you learned in the first half was wrong.
moon men rocks
So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.
writing self-confidence arrogance
It takes great self-confidence to write a newspaper column. Some might say it takes arrogance. Be that as it may, my willingness to pronounce on a great many matters of which I have little or no knowledge is one of my prime qualifications for this trade.
empty-mind people brain
Of all the people expressing their mental vacuity, none has a better excuse for an empty head than the newspaperman: If he pauses to restock his brain, he invites onrushing deadlines to trample him flat. Broadcasting the contents of empty minds is what most of us do most of the time, and nobody more relentlessly than I.
happiness taken goal
Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.
birthday fashion love-you
In an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one's beloved.
heart light heavy
You can't enjoy light verse with a heavy heart.
publicity live-by dies
Live by publicity, you'll probably die by publicity.