Literary Birthday – 27 July – Joseph Mitchell

Joseph Mitchell was born 27 July 1908, and died 24 May 1996.

Seven Quotes

I believe the most interesting human beings, so far as talk is concerned, are anthropologists, farmers, prostitutes, psychiatrists, and an occasional bartender. The best talk is artless, the talk of people trying to reassure or comfort themselves, women in the sun, grouped around baby carriages, talking about their weeks in the hospital or the way meat has gone up, or men in the saloons, talking to combat the loneliness everyone feels.
…you can hate a place with all your heart and soul and still be homesick for it.
I had not yet found out about time; I was still under the illusion that I had plenty of time – time for this, time for that, time for everything, time to waste.
I have a great deal of experience in justifying myself to myself.
It is perhaps an ugly comment on the American press, but the function of the interviewer on most newspapers is to entertain, not to shed light.
In New York City, especially in Greenwich Village, down among the cranks and the misfits and the one-lungers and the has-beens and the might’ve beens and the would-bes and the never-wills and the God-knows-whats, I have always felt at home.
Life is a goddam mess…but you wouldn’t want to miss it!

Joseph Mitchell was an American writer. He is best known for the work he published in The New Yorker. He is famous for his written portraits of eccentrics and people on the fringes of society, especially in and around New York City. He wrote Up in the Old Hotel.