Charlie LeDuff - Detroit: An American Autopsy (2013)

9 Sourced Quotes

View all Charlie LeDuff Quotes
At the end of the day, the Detroiter may be the most important American there is because no one knows better than he that we're all standing at the edge of the shaft.

Charlie LeDuff
And then I settled into the most natural thing for a man with no real talents.
Journalism.

Charlie LeDuff
There's not much a newspaper reporter can do about dead men. But a newspaper reporter and a cop and a judge can deliver some justice. That's why the founding fathers wrote it up the way they did, I suppose. Life. Liberty. Pursuit of happiness. Everyone is entitled to those things.

Charlie LeDuff
Go ahead and laugh at Detroit. Because you are laughing at yourself.

Charlie LeDuff
Some people are doomed from birth because their environment is so toxic.

Charlie LeDuff
Since its founding, Detroit has been a place of perpetual flames. Three times the city has suffered race riots and three times the city has burned to the ground. The city's flag acknowledges as much. Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus: We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes.

Charlie LeDuff
We are born to a time. What you do with it is on you. Do the best you can. Try to be good. And live.

Charlie LeDuff
What our generation failed to learn was the nobility of work. An honest day's labor. The worthiness of the man in the white socks who would pull out a picture of his grandkids from his wallet. For us, the factory would never do. And turning away from our birthright - our grandfather in the white socks - is the thing that ruined us.

Charlie LeDuff
But wanderlust is like a pretty girl - you wake up one morning, find she's grown old and decide that either you're going to commit your life or you're going to walk away.

Charlie LeDuff