A Quote by Nicholas Pileggi

Las Vegas is a city of kickbacks. A desert city of greased palms. A place where a $20 bill can buy approval, a $100 bill adulation and $1,000 canonization.

Nicholas Pileggi

Quote Topics

Adulation Approval Bill Buy City Desert Las Vegas Palms Place Vegas

Quote Author

Nicholas Pileggi
American - Author
Born: February 22, 1933

The reinvention of American culture as purely the self catapulted Las Vegas to prominence. The city took sin and made it choice -- a sometimes ambiguous choice, but choice nonetheless. Combined with a visionary approach to experience that melded Hollywood and Americans' taste for comfort and self-deception, Las Vegas grew into the last American frontier city, as foreign at times as Prague but as quintessential as Peoria. In Las Vegas, you can choose your fantasy; in the rest of America, you don't always get to pick.

Hal Rothman

As I've gotten older, I've wanted to represent Las Vegas more. Represent the Southwest. It's a magical place. The desert. I do understand people's criticisms, but it's a magical place and a beautiful city, even though there are a lot of things that are wrong with it.

Brandon Flowers

I'm a Sagittarian, see, I can't be fenced in. I been living in Las Vegas, greatest city in the world. I look out my window for 100 miles. In Vegas, there's nothing to do but gamble, drink or have sex. I have two of 'em.

Redd Foxx

Las Vegas is the boxing capital. During a Floyd Mayweather fight weekend, you can shop, party, stay out late and do anything you want. The city of Las Vegas has everything.

Floyd Mayweather, Jr.

[On Las Vegas:] ... The City That Never Sleeps. The City That Sins and Smiles and Lives On the Edge. The city where vices become virtues, become what everyone is here to do.

Karen Kijewski

In a city of illusion, where change is what the city does, it's no wonder Las Vegas is the court of last resort, the last place to start over, to reinvent yourself in the same way that the city does, time after time. For some it works; for some it doesn't, but they keep coming and trying.

Hal Rothman

I love Atlanta. It's a great city with great crews there, but it's really hard to make it into a Las Vegas version of it because it doesn't look at all like Las Vegas.

Baran bo Odar

In China the largest denomination bill they have is 100 yen, and that's maybe $7. So here you have a whole economy working with only a $7 note as the largest denomination. The euro wants to get rid of the 500-euro bill just as the United States years ago got rid of the $1,000 bill because only the criminals used $1,000 bills.

Michael Hudson

It is only the words of the bill that have presidential approval, where that approval is given. It is not to be supposed that in signing a bill the President endorses the whole Congressional Record.

Robert H. Jackson

The president has the power to sign or veto a bill. If he signs it, it becomes law. If he vetoes it, it does not become law. That's pretty much an absolute power, but if he signs a bill or vetoes a bill in return for a $100,000 payment, he's guilty of bribery and he can go to jail.

Richard Painter

In Las Vegas, people seem to believe, the prosperity spawned by tourism and gaming can make them whole, financially and spiritually. Las Vegas now melds fun, work, and wealth, showing a path toward the brightest vistas of the post-industrial world. It is the first city of the twenty-first century.

Hal Rothman

There is always a sneer in Las Vegas. The mountains around it sneer. The desert sneers. And arrogant in the middle of its wide valley, dominating those diligent sprawling suburbs, the downtown city sneers like anything.

Jan Morris

Presidents and presidential assassins are like Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. Even though one city is all about sin and the other is all about salvation, they are identical, one-dimensional company towns built up by the sheer will of true believers.

Sarah Vowell

I'm not a huge fan of Las Vegas. It's a fun place to go to play a bit of poker but it's so man-made. And being quite environmentally conscious, I couldn't believe the amount of neon lighting in the city.