Quotessence
Home / Authors / Tom Bissell Biography
Tom Bissell

Tom Bissell Biography

Journalist

Related Quotes

“And so, my beloved Kermit, my dear little Hussein, at the moment America changed forever, your father was wandering an ICBM-denuded watseland, nervously monitoring his radiation level, armed only with a baseball bat, a 10mm pistol, and six rounds of ammunition, in search of a vicious gang of mohawked marauders who were 100 percent bad news and totally had to be dealth with. Trust Daddy on this one.”

TrustBaseballPistolBatMaraudersViscous10mmGang Daddy
Book:Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter
Create image

“In the emergency of growing up, we all need heroes. But the father I grew up with was no hero to me, not then. He was too wounded in the head, too endlessly and terribly sad. Too funny, too explosive, too confusing. Heroes are uncomplicated. *This* makes them do *that*… But the war does not make sense. War senselessly wounds everyone right down the line. A body bag fits more than just its intended corpse. Take the 58,000 American soldiers lost in Vietnam and multiply by four, five, six—and only then does one begin to realize the damage this war has done… War when necessary, is unspeakable. When unnecessary, it is unforgivable. It is not an occasion for heroism. It is an occasion only for survival and death. To regard war in any other way only guarantees its inevitable reappearance.”

WarVietnam
Book:The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam
Create image

“To create anything — whether a short story or a magazine profile or a film or a sitcom — is to believe, if only momentarily, you are capable of magic. These essays are about that magic — which is sometimes perilous, sometimes infectious, sometimes fragile, sometimes failed, sometimes infuriating, sometimes triumphant, and sometimes tragic. I went up there. I wrote. I tried to see.”

IfsBelieveSometimesStoriesFilmMagicCapableMagazinesTragicFragileShort StoryEssaysProfileSitcomTriumphantInfuriating
Author:Tom Bissell
Create image

“[M]y first published book had just appeared in stores. The last year of my life-the year of finishing it, editing it, and seeing it through its various page-proof passes-ranks among the most unnerving of my young life. It has not felt good, or freeing. It has felt nerve-shreddingly disquieting. Publication simply allows one that much more to worry about. This cannot be said to aspiring writers often or sternly enough. Whatever they carry within themselves they believe publication cures will not, I can all but guarantee, be cured. You just wind up with new diseases.”

YearsFirstsBelieveSaidI CanBookEnoughLastsYoungFeltWorrySeeingWindDiseasePagesVariousStoresProofCuresGuaranteesNervesLast YearEditingFinishingPublicationAspiring WritersYoung LifeFinishing It
Author:Tom Bissell
Create image