Skip to content

I was walking downstairs carrying a drink in one hand and a book in the other. Don't try that after ninety.

— Studs Terkel

Another quote →

Source and credibility

Wikiquote does not flag this quote as disputed or misattributed.

Source: On breaking his hip, as quoted in "How Studs helps me lead my life" in Roger Ebert's Journal (24 May 2008)
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

More by Studs Terkel

Something was still there, that something that distinguishes an artist from a performer: the revealing of self. Here I be. Not for long, but here I be. In sensing her mortality, we sensed our own.

Heroic? I was scared shitless! But my ego was at stake. My vanity. "Whaddya mean, I'm dumb?"

The Guardian interview (2002)

All Studs Terkel quotes →

Topics

Books

More quotes by Studs Terkel

Chicago is not the most corrupt American city, it's the most theatrically corrupt.

I like quoting Einstein. Know why? Because nobody dares contradict you.

The Guardian interview (2002)

I'm celebrated for celebrating the uncelebrated.

The Guardian interview (2002)

I was born in the year the Titanic sank. The Titanic went down, and I came up. That tells you a little about the fairness of life.

At a time when pimpery, lick-spittlery, and picking the public's pocket are the order of the day — indeed, officially proclaimed as virtue — the poet must play the madcap to keep his balance. And ours.

All Studs Terkel quotes →

You may also like

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Studs Terkel (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.