I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world. – Russell Baker
Newspaper people, once celebrated as founts of ribald humor and uncouth fun, have of late lost all their gaiety, and small wonder. – Russell Baker
What the New Yorker calls home would seem like a couple of closets to most Americans, yet he manages not only to live there but also to grow trees and cockroaches right on the premises. – Russell Baker
When sudden death takes a president, opportunities for new beginnings flourish among the ambitious and the tensions among such people can be dramatic, as they were when President Kennedy was killed. – Russell Baker
Is fuel efficiency really what we need most desperately? I say that what we really need is a car that can be shot when it breaks down. – Russell Baker
When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible – cowards and fools. – Russell Baker
Except for politics, no business is scrutinized more exhaustively than journalism. – Russell Baker
Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were. – Russell Baker
Children rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity, there is no parent left to tell them. – Russell Baker
Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things. – Russell Baker
Americans like fat books and thin women. – Russell Baker
