Nick Tosches quotes:

Johnny Depp is, to me, a rare kindred spirit with like sensibilities, who has escaped the beast. He's probably one of the few people that have survived Los Angeles as a human being.

Mortality applies to every aspect of life. The fear of death is the driving fear of life.

I think Elvis Presley will never be solved

You see, I needed to go to Hell.

I often wonder if I had the complete freedom to not have to write, if I would write. That's the one mystery that I hope I get to experience.

When I was young, I kept trying to read 'Moby-Dick', and I couldn't get that far into it. And I kept thinking, 'Well, man, if I can't read the great American novel, I could never be a writer.' And this bothered me a great deal.

The things I wanted to be when I was a kid were an archeologist, because of dinosaur bones; a garbage man, because they got to ride on the side of the trucks; and a writer.

Exceptional men do not hold their experiences to be out of the ordinary or of interest to anyone else. Unlike the trodden fungus-men, they are not so ignorantly and presumptuously self-absorbed. They are nobody and they know it. They shun notice. They are exceedingly rare.

Joe Bonomo has written a fine book: a book not only about a band or times passed, but also about the rare virtue of endurance.

To me, music's something I can dance to or listen to. To write about it is always more of what the music represents, or what it reflects. Like an ideal song, to me, is a song that you can dance to, that summons up some darker and greater mystery.

I don't have a college degree.

For years, I never really pondered how I came to be a writer from where I came from.

Steiner has here transformed the vaporous conceptions of his life, the vapors of what never was and never will be, from their aeriform state to a fine and ethereal substantiality. My Unwritten Books is a gathering of shades, an elegant and eloquent gathering of mind, feeling, and autumnal passion. (...) And that is the lovely irony of this unique little book. None of these unwritten books should have been written. They are better here, as they are, untamed and errant phantoms of a brilliance whose emanations no one mortal lifetime could ever accommodate in full.

The older you get, the more you live with ghosts.