At 16, I dropped out of school and spent five years working as a bicycle mechanic and volunteering in a Trauma Centre before ultimately deciding to go to university. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
I’d grown up in a working class neighborhood in Baltimore, a place hard hit by the offshoring of numerous heavy industries – steel, textile, shipbuilding. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
I didn’t fit the typical profile of a trader. I was an English major working on a novel at night. Most everyone else was a maths or economics major; most everyone else had relatives or family in banking. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
At Cornell University, it was well known that after five years on Wall Street, you could expect to be making half a million a year in salary and bonus; after 10 years, you could expect a million or more. I had 60 grand of university debt, and my parents had no retirement. I needed that money. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
What art and books do at their best is investigate why we are the way we are. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
Each time a high-wage job is lost, a family is turned upside down. And that affects the communities where they live. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
I should say that generally I’m a pretty happy person, but as soon as I’m done with a project, I’m usually not happy at all. I feel a little empty and strange. I begin to think about how I can get better, stretch more artistically and intellectually. My biggest worry is getting complacent. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
When you hold things back, when you don’t commit completely to your ideas and trust completely in your own instincts, you are guaranteeing your own failure – even if you end up having commercial success. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
If you’ve grown up with guns, the thought that someone might take them away makes your stomach churn. They make you feel safe. If you didn’t grow up with guns, if you don’t know how to use them, then the thought that someone else has them makes your stomach churn. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
Your job as a writer is to find storylines, narrative structures, and characters to show the things that you believe rather than saying them or telling them. Philipp Meyer Read Quote
