Walt Mossberg Quotes

When water power then steam power were harnessed to spin and weave cloth, a cottage craft turned into an industry overnight.

Nothing moves me more than the history of the United States.

My favorite zone is from 1890 -1915, that zone that spans the overlap of the so-called Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. People had such a boundless sense of optimism; They felt they could do anything they wanted to do, and they went out and tried to do it.

I did a co-authored book not so long ago that was an American historical romance set at the turn of the century. I'm fascinated by that period in time and would love to do more.

Americans are good with to-do lists; just tell us what to do, and we'll do it. Throughout our history, we have proven that. Colonize. Check. Win our independence. Check. Form a union. Check. Expand to the Pacific. Check. Settle the West. Check. Keep the Union together. Check. Industrialize. Check. Fight the Nazis. Check.

I would like to invest more of my brain space in understanding the history of my city, because whenever I learn about the history of Detroit, it's always so fascinating, from a little kind of beaver-trading post to the place where automobiles were manufactured.

In the old days, there were three networks, and all of a sudden, Walter Cronkite is the most trusted man in America. Everybody believes what he says, not even thinking. In those days, we didn't even know it was being spun. We were very willing to just listen to it and go along with.

I grew up among heroes who went down the pit, who played rugby, told stories, sang songs of war.

The old model for India was to be self-sufficient. It was the ideal India became independent with, that you spin your own thread, make your own clothes.

I am very aware that I'm the product of growing up in England and the tradition of designing and making, of England industrialising first.

I first came to the Garden when I was a sophomore in college. The old, old Garden.

The department store was a product of the 19th century and became a very important institution as America went into the 20th century. It provided show places in developing towns like Terre Haute, Sacramento, and Dallas.

The Italian futurists, the German expressionists, and the British vorticists were fascinated by speed and the ways the modern world was shattering conventions. The old ways of painting, writing, sculpting, and composing no longer seemed adequate to capture the world.

One thing I am sure about Manchester is that people are proud of their history. They are proud of their football, music, the industrial revolution, and all the amazing things that were invented here.

I enjoy gigging in industrial towns. It seems to be where I go down the best. Somewhere where they have a history of manufacturing, they're my favourite places to play.

America was built on cheap and abundant coal.

I've been to Manchester enough to know it's a real place. It's not Factory Records and the Smiths bicycling around. I get it. It's a modern city.

Manchester's history is cotton and wool. Birmingham's is iron and steel.

I grew up in a little pit village on the outskirts of Durham.

I love old industrial imagery and smokestacks belching pollution, maybe because Iceland doesn't have any industry, just mountains and beautiful nature.

My granddad founded a manufacturing company in Northern England - a place called Bury - that manufactured denim, and one of the brands they created denim for was Disney.

I'm fascinated by the ruins and remains of industrialisation.

'Night Mail' belongs quintessentially to the age of steam. It is impossible to simply go with the idea of remaking it.

I was shaped by a pit environment and the Second World War. My playground was on the pit tip at Clay Cross and I grew up with that mining background. My father was a miner and my granddad was a miner, and I would say three out of ten on the street where I was born were working in the pits.

Where I grew up was a place called Salford, which was the industrial heartland of Manchester. And where I lived in Salford, I could walk to the center of Manchester within about 20 minutes. So I lived really close to the center.