Studs Terkel Quotes on Time (5 Quotes)

Why are we born? We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes.

The history of those who shed those other tears, the history of those anonymous millions, is what Terkel wants readers and listeners to come away with. What's it like to be that goofy little soldier, scared stiff, with his bayonet aimed at Christ What's it like to have been a woman in a defense-plant job during World War II What's it like to be a kid at the front lines It's all funny and tragic at the same time.

One time, ... I was doing 'Studs Place,' my early TV show, and I'm supposed to be quitting cigars and I'm yearning for a smoke and I quote from the 'Odyssey.' I say, I am Ulysses passing the Isle of Circe. Meaning I got these temptations. Truck drivers called in and said they liked the classical reference.

I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.

Suddenly the sirens are sounding all over Chicago. At the time, the Cold War was going on between us and Russia, and there was great fear through the air. And when people heard the sirens, old women had heart attacks and kids ran under beds because that's what they were taught in school. I remember that moment most, the sirens going on and people not celebrating the Sox but hurrying to the grocery store to store up on stuff for the next month of siege, for they believed the Russians were coming.