Literary Birthday – 16 May – Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel was born on 16 May 1912 and died on 31 October  2008.

Studs Terkel Quotes

1. People are hungry for stories. It’s part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another.
2. More and more we are into communications; and less and less into communication.
3. I want a language that speaks the truth.
4. I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what’s the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven.
5. ‘Curiosity never killed this cat’ — that’s what I’d like as my epitaph.

Studs Terkel was an award-winning American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He chronicled American lives from the Great Depression to the early 21st century. He received the Pulitzer Prize for The Good War. Bill Clinton, then the President of the United States, awarded Terkel the National Humanities Medal in 1997. Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times (1977) was the first of Terkel’s autobiographies; the second, Touch and Go, was released 30 years later.

Source for Image: New photo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Studs_Terkel_-_1979-1.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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