Richard Ben Cramer Quotes

The expectations for a nonfiction writer are awful high.

- Richard Ben Cramer

Don't be the schmuck on the other side of the table. Don't get an interview with the guy. Be in the room with him while he's being interviewed by someone else.

- Richard Ben Cramer

You can say you're going to take a vacation, and you can even take the time, but you might as well not, because the book is still sitting in your head.

- Richard Ben Cramer

People think of DiMaggio as the exemplar of a 'golden age,' and in some ways, he was. But in the most fundamental ways, he was really the first modern athletic superstar because, number one, he ushered in the era of big money; and number two, he never did anything except that - he never really took another job in another industry.

- Richard Ben Cramer

The first time I met Alex Rodriguez, he was in the fight of his life. He was the guy who was supposed to have everything - good looks, good health, good habits - all the talent in the world and most of the money.

- Richard Ben Cramer

We strove for more than 60 years to give Joe DiMaggio the hero's life. From his debut at Yankee Stadium in 1936 until his death in 1999, DiMaggio was, at every turn, one man we could look at who made us feel good.

- Richard Ben Cramer

What good was being the king of the rackets in Newark, N.J., if you couldn't have DiMaggio at your dinner table?

- Richard Ben Cramer

It's not fit work for an adult just dragging idols off the shelf. It's too easy.

- Richard Ben Cramer

When there are fewer and fewer publishers of scale, it's just not good for authors.

- Richard Ben Cramer

I used to think that the image of the press in the 1940s - a bunch of guys in hats screaming on the courthouse steps - was all baloney. I used to say, 'I know reporters. We're not like that.' But we are.

- Richard Ben Cramer

Even if you had the wherewithal to embarrass a reporter, there was no mechanism to do it. And in most cases, you might as well save your breath because the reporter had no shame anyway.

- Richard Ben Cramer

I had every stress-related illness you can get.

- Richard Ben Cramer

Losing the presidency is not like losing any other office. More than any other office, it's a vote about you as a whole human being.

- Richard Ben Cramer

We're still in the ditch, and the Gennifer Flowers story about Bill Clinton says it all. A tabloid fired several bullets into the air, and the rest of the herd began to stampede.

- Richard Ben Cramer

TV is set up to be just a shout fest: Is this good for Republicans or bad for Republicans; is this good for Cain or bad for Cain... tell me something that I need to know.

- Richard Ben Cramer

If you're following candidates in a campaign, you get on their plane, and what they're generally doing is they're dividing the cost of that charter flight by the number of reporters they're carrying aboard. In effect, the press is buying them that campaign flight.

- Richard Ben Cramer

At some point... Israel ground away, or gave away, her birthright of loyalty from the West.

- Richard Ben Cramer

DiMaggio was never a rube. He was very smart and very urban. Coming out of the Great Depression, he was the immigrant boy who made it big. Coming back from World War II, he had all the wealth and power that New York aspired to. When New York saw itself as the center of the world, he was its paragon of class.

- Richard Ben Cramer

I was with the mujaheddin, the rebels, and they were fighting against the Russians, and they would bring me along. Some of the adventures, when I look back at them now, it's a wonder I'm still around.

- Richard Ben Cramer

He's made a business out of being Joe DiMaggio. To remain Joe DiMaggio, you better not have too much known. He's right. The closer you get, the more explosively bad stuff you find.

- Richard Ben Cramer

I'm just an old storyteller, and I always wanted to know, what the hell were these candidates really like?

- Richard Ben Cramer

Certainly no man could be such an irredeemable 'schlub' as the American press portrays its losers.

- Richard Ben Cramer

This book-promotion stuff is like a political campaign. You work your butt off, and at the end of the day, you can't tell if it's made a damned bit of difference.

- Richard Ben Cramer

Few men try for best ever, and Ted Williams is one of those.

- Richard Ben Cramer

At every step in his life, DiMaggio was what New Yorkers wanted in a hero.

- Richard Ben Cramer

I'm enough of a patriot to think that the American public makes good choices.

- Richard Ben Cramer

When you're working on a project that's going to take six years, you're weird from the jump.

- Richard Ben Cramer

There is not often much policy discussion with the Bushes. There isn't much introspection. Several generations of Bush men could pass by in which the great questions of humankind will go undiscussed.

- Richard Ben Cramer

I think the story of DiMaggio was alluring precisely for its impossibility.

- Richard Ben Cramer

He was J. DiMaggio, and that was his business. He always was served and hosted - he was America's guest. And I really I don't think we would have the athletes that we have today and the social system in which they live without DiMaggio and what he did.

- Richard Ben Cramer

When your friend causes you trouble, a president gets rid of those friends.

- Richard Ben Cramer

The average-guy routine works only so much, and then people begin to want something more.

- Richard Ben Cramer

After the presidency, there's nowhere else to go in politics.

- Richard Ben Cramer

People feel overloaded, that politics has become kind of a public utility: hot- and cold-running politics any time of the day or night.

- Richard Ben Cramer

The whole point of Israel was to create a place where Jews could live the best life - and liveliest - in accordance with their values.

- Richard Ben Cramer

It's very hard to imagine anybody being president when the stuff that's written about them is empty of who they are.

- Richard Ben Cramer