Life & Mortality Quote by Studs Terkel

Terkel takes the oldest metaphysical question and drags it back to street level, where his work always lived: in the voices of ordinary people trying to make meaning without the luxury of certainty. The opening gambit concedes the grim baseline - death is the only guaranteed plot point - then refuses to let that be the story. The pivot, "But what happens between...?" is classic Terkel: a radio host's rhythm, a reporter's instinct for the human middle, the long stretch where most lives actually happen. "We're born to live" sounds simple, almost naive, but it's a deliberate rebuke to a culture that treats living as preparation (for success, for salvation, for retirement) rather than an act in itself.

The sting is in the last line: "One is a realist if one hopes". It's a reversal of the usual moral hierarchy where realism means cynicism and hope means denial. Terkel's subtext is that despair is the lazy pose, especially in an America trained to confuse hard-nosed detachment with wisdom. Hope, for him, isn't a mood; it's a discipline grounded in evidence - the evidence he gathered from workers, activists, veterans, the bruised and still-speaking. In the 20th century he chronicled - Depression, war, civil rights, Vietnam, Reagan-era retrenchment - hope wasn't sentimental. It was a survival tactic and a civic stance.

The quote works because it makes optimism accountable. You can acknowledge the end, he implies, and still insist on the middle. That's not escapism. That's reportage.