4,407 quotes curated by Chris Lavergne:
“You have things that are sprouts that are beginning to yield and employ people and beginning to do interesting things and become influential. But compared to what the business once was, it's nothing. We've now built a business on the basis of being almost completely staffed by young people who are paid nothing. That is the business now. So, relatively speaking, it's pretty damn bleak. The news business has lost, like, 50 percent in four or five years.”
Tagged:
Digital media, Publishing
“His agency was structured in the loosest possible way. He detested hierarchies. There were no department heads, and no job descriptions. The agency operated as a partnership, like a big law firm. When he offered me a job, he gave me no inkling what work he had in mind for me. Office boy? Copywriter? His successor? He did not say, and I did not ask him.”
Tagged:
Hiring
“Left-wing economists, ever eager to snatch the scourge from the hand of God, hold that advertising tempts people to squander money on things they don't need. Who are these élitists to decide what you need? Do you need a dishwasher? Do you need a deodorant? Do you need a trip to Rome? I feel no qualms of conscience about persuading you that you do.”
Tagged:
Advertising, Elitism
“Advertising is not the noblest creation of man's mind, as so many of its advocates would like the public to think. It does not, single-handedly, sustain the whole structure of capitalism and democracy and the Free World. It is just as nonsensical to suggest that we are superhuman as to accept the indictment that we are subhuman. We are merely human, trying to do a necessary human job with dignity, with decency and with competence.”
Tagged:
Advertising
“Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature... Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me. Tell the truth.”
Tagged:
Creation
“Tell your prospective client what your weak points are, before he notices them. This will make you more credible when you boast about your strong points.”
Tagged:
Client Relations
“There was no system to any of this. At that point Chloe Byrnes wasn't a real person to me and on that afternoon in the house on Ocean Drive a few decisions had to be made, the priority being: I would never dream of leaving any of this. At first I was confused by what passed for love in this world: people were discarded because they were too old or too fat or too poor or they had too much hair or not enough, they were wrinkled, they had no muscles, no definition, no tone, they weren't hip, they weren't remotely famous. This was how you chose lovers. This was what decided friends. And I had to accept this if I wanted to get anywhere. When I looked over at Chloe, she shrugged. I observed the shrug. She mouthed the words Take … a … hike … On the verge of tears — because I was dealing with the fact that we lived in a world where beauty was considered an accomplishment — I turned away and made a promise to myself: to be harder, to not care, to be cool. The future started mapping itself out and I focused on it. In that moment I felt as if I was disappearing from pool-side in the villa on Ocean Drive and I was floating above the palm trees, growing smaller in the wide blank sky until I no longer existed and relief swept over me with such force I sighed.”
Tagged:
Vanishing Point