Job
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I recognize that I had a good deal of good luck in my life. I came along at a time when it was pretty easy to get a job in journalism. I went to work at CBS News when I was about 22, and within a year or so was reporting on the air.
The U.S. Military is us. There is no truer representation of a country than the people that it sends into the field to fight for it. The people who wear our uniform and carry our rifles into combat are our kids, and our job is to support them, because they're protecting us.
In '57, I got a job at the Blue Angel nightclub, and a gentleman named Ken Welch wrote all my material for me. I lived at a place called the Rehearsal Club that was actually the basis for a play called Stage Door.
You can always tell a real friend: when you've made a fool of yourself he doesn't feel you've done a permanent job.
Whenever things go a bit sour in a job I'm doing, I always tell myself, 'You can do better than this'.
My own experience with being interviewed is mixed. I suppose they're a part of my job, and as I would like readers to connect with my books, I do them. I've also made many lifelong friends whom I first encountered as interviewers — as a writer, they're a terrific way to meet and add smart new people to one's life.
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.
