A Quote by Nat Hentoff
My father had always been a traveling salesman - New England, the South, whatever.
Related Quotes
I had a father who was a traveling salesman.
I've always had a bawdy sense of humor. My father was a traveling salesman and he would bring jokes home. He would say, "Honey, you can take this one to school, but you can't take that one to school."
I was a salesman just out of college, traveling all over American roads in the cause of selling handbags to stores that would in turn sell them to American women, not unlike my father had done.
The best thing about being a model was traveling. I had traveled the world by the time I was thirty. France, England, Austria, South Africa, Italy, Australia, Japan, Seychelle Islands, and all over the Caribbean.
If the British prose style is Churchillian, America is the tobacco auctioneer, the barker; Runyon, Lardner, W.W., the traveling salesman who can sell the world the Brooklyn Bridge every day, can put anything over on you and convince you that tomatoes grow at the South Pole.
I don't think I would have been a good architect. Really, I have thought about this from time to time, and I might have wound up like my father, who never did find that which he could devote his life to. He sort of drifted from job to job. He was a traveling salesman, he was a bookkeeper, he was an office manager, he was here, there, there. And however enthusiastic he was at the beginning, his job would bore him. If I hadn't had the writing, I think I might have replicated what he was doing, which would not have been good.
I grew up in the South with my father; blues and country, that's always been my core. But I had it in me not to do what was expected. I wanted to find my own footing.
My father wasn't there the majority of the time. My father, someone who I always honored and looked up to, had been in the military; he had been to war. I would hear stories about different experiences he went through, but as I got older, my father moved away.
My father was a salesman, and I always said I wouldn't be one.
In the kind of New England I'm from, you are expected to stay and marry somebody from New England - well, Maine, actually - so I think it was seen as a betrayal when I left for New York, which has been my refuge.
I think it was the occasion of the final psychological break with Great Britain, in a way that had clearly not happened to that date, especially in New England and to som degree in the South.
We've always been inspired by England; my father's first store was here.
White people scare the crap out of me. I have never been attacked by a black person, never been evicted by a black person, never had my security deposit ripped off by a black landlord, never had a black landlord, never been pulled over by a black cop, never been sold a lemon by a black car salesman, never seen a black car salesman, never had a black person deny me a bank loan, never had a black person bury my movie, and I've never heard a black person say, 'We're going to eliminate ten thousand jobs here - have a nice day!'
I had an acting teacher tell me once that if you're playing a car salesman, you don't want to be an OK car salesman, you want to play the best car salesman.
In the weeks since I had made the decision to leave my father's house, I had grown up. And I had learned that not every battle can be fought by firing an arrow from a bow. But I would have to face whatever new challenges came my way as bravely as I had faced the Huns. I could not wallow in self-pity, thinking about what might have been. I had to do my duty. It was the only way to stay true to myself.
I never had a spring break. I've always been on the road. I've always been traveling.
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