Kinky Friedman
Richard S. "Kinky" Friedman is an American singer, songwriter, novelist, humorist, politician and former columnist for Texas Monthly who styles himself in the mold of popular American satirists Will Rogers and Mark Twain. He was one of two independent candidates in the 2006 election for the office of Governor of Texas. Receiving 12.6% of the vote, Friedman placed fourth in the six-person race.
Friedman was born in Chicago to Jewish parents, Dr. S. Thomas Friedman and his wife Minnie (Samet) Friedman. The family moved to a ranch in central Texas a few years later. Friedman had an early interest in both music and chess, and was chosen at age 7 as one of 50 local players to challenge U.S. grandmaster Samuel Reshevsky to simultaneous matches in Houston. Reshevsky won all 50 matches, but Friedman was by far the youngest competitor.
Friedman graduated from Austin High School in Austin, Texas in 1962 and earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, majoring in Psychology. He took part in the Plan II Honors program and was a member of the Tau Delta Phi fraternity. During his freshman year, Chinga Chavin gave Friedman the nickname "Kinky" because of his curly hair.
Friedman served two years in the United States Peace Corps, teaching on Borneo in Malaysia with John Gross. During his service in the Peace Corps, he met future Texas Jewboy road manager Dylan Ferrero, with whom he still works today. Friedman lives at Echo Hill Ranch, his family's summer camp near Kerrville, Texas. He founded Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, also located near Kerrville, whose mission is to care for stray, abused and aging animals; more than 1,000 dogs have been saved from animal euthanasia.
Series:
* Kinky Friedman Mystery
“I was so high, I needed a stepladder to scratch my own ass.”
“My dear,Find what you love and let it kill you.Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness.Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but it’s much better to be killed by a lover.~ Falsely yours”
“You can pick your friends and you can pick your nose, but you can't wipe your friends off on a saddle.”
“Remember: Y'all is singular. All y'all is plural. All y'all's is plural possessive.”
“I support gay marriage. I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us.”
“Happiness is a moving target.”
“If you have the choice between humble and cocky, go with cocky. There's always time to be humble later, once you've been proven horrendously, irrevocably wrong.”
“If you don't love Jesus-go to hell!”
“why did i so passionately require the truth? because all great fiction is true”
“see the people on the sidewalk?...aren't you glad you're not one of them?they're all so self-importantly going nowhere...they just have no idea of who they are or where they really belong. nothing will ever be enough for them. nothing will truly make them happy. they all think they've got to get someplace, got to meet someone, got to get to work, got to get home, got to keep that appointment. if they had a hundred million bucks, it wouldn't be enough for them. if they had four cars, they'd need more. if they had four homes, they'd need more. they are organically out of touch with their land and their tribe.”
“Friday night was the night most people thought they were supposed to have fun. Trouble was most people didn't know what fun was or how to have it, so things usually ended up pretty ugly.”
“You don't accomplish much by swimming with the mainstream. Hell, a dead fish can do that.”
“May the God of your choice bless you.”
“The best fiction is true.”
“There's a fine line between fiction and non-fiction and I think I snorted it somewhere in 1979”
“But the most dangerous thing in the world in the world is to run the risk of waking up one morning and realizing suddenly that all this time you've been living without really and truly living and by then it's too late. When you wake up to that kind of realization, it's too late for wishes and regrets. It's even too late to dream.”
“How hard can it be?”
“Well, I hate to be the one to take the flyswatter to Tinker Bell, but...”
“Man's ability to delude himself is infinite.”
“I'm going to lower the drinking age to eighteen. If you're old enough to die in Iraq, you're old enough to drink.”
“A fool and his money are soon elected”
“Never re-elect anybody”
“Always respect your superiors, if you have any.”
“If you're lookin' for a helpin' hand, try the one at the end of your arm.”
“The art of writing fiction is to sail as dangerously close to the truth as possible without sinking the ship”
“Now I have a cat. Well, that's not quite accurate. A cat and I have each other.”
“Most people, of course, spend their lives caring about the wrong things. The worry about South Africa or Nicaragua. They spend so much time finding themselves that they lose their taxicabs. They don't see that what kind of napkin you get at a delicatessen is a matter of much significance in the world today.That's why they don't get linen”
“Politics is the only field of human endeavor where the more experience you have, the worse you get.”