Quote

There is nothing harder for an Artist than to retain his Artistic integrity in the tomb of success. A tomb, nevertheless, which nearly every Artist: whether he admits it or not naturally wants to get into.

Caitlin Thomas

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Caitlin Thomas
Age: 80 †
Born: 1913
Born: December 8
Died: 1994
Died: July 31
Author
Autobiographer
Poet
Hammersmith
London
Caitlin MacNamara
Every
Artistic
Integrity
Admits
Harder
Tomb
Wants
Tombs
Whether
Retain
Success
Nevertheless
Artist
Naturally
Nothing
Nearly

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Between threading a needle and raving insanity is the smallest eye in creation.
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[On journalists:] ... however lyingly libellous they may be: nobody can seriously hurt the reputation of a Great person. If he is hurt: he is not Great. They can but scratch at his skin with their mice nails.
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money ... is only important when you have none and though it may not be everything, it goes a very long way towards blocking up the winter draft of age.
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England, where nobody ever says what they mean: and by denying feeling, kill it off stone-cold at the roots.
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none of what I know is out of books. ... I prefer tactual learning. Touching, on the quick of the sore nail, of present, mobile life. To toy, to gnaw, to tear: at the living element of pain. Like at a living drumstick.
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One should never go back to a place one has loved for, however, rough the going forward is, it is better than the snuffing out-of-love return.
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A lot of warm vulgarity is incomparably preferable to a little bit of pinched niceness
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I am unable, mentally incapable, of relating the dead thing, the broken body refusing to divulge why or where the occupant has gone, to the thing that was alive.
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There is a great gulf between the really creative person and normal people. The totally creative person does not have the rest of his life in proper proportion.
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Virtue in a man doesn't make you want to grab him.
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[On journalists:] They are the scavengers of society who, possessing no guts of their own, tear out the guts of celebrities. They have the sycophantic, false enthusing gush of maiden aunts: who are accustomed to being trampled on doormats.
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The wretched Artist himself is alternatively the lowest worm that ever crawled when no fire is in him or the loftiest God that ever sand when the fire is going.
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But there is that about well-intentioned advice that has the opposite effect of the one intended, and causes a Spanish fly of perversity to enter into the hitherto passive soul.
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I had got to the dawn of the beautiful not caring, but fully aware, stage, which degenerates so imperceptibly into the doing something unpermissible stage.
Caitlin Thomas
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Anybody who thinks there is any vague chance of adult exchange with a child is up the spout and would be much less disappointed if they recognized the chasm unbridgeably dividing them.
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But the true evil of drink lies in the disillusion: that the initial pleasure very soon evaporates, leaving a demoralizing craving for more, which is not even temporarily pleasurable. Which then leads to deterioration of the faculties of both body and mind plus a bewildering lack of co-operation between the two.
Caitlin Thomas
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[On journalists:] They are as disruptive a menace to the public body: as grating turds in the intestines are to the private body.
Caitlin Thomas
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My bitterness is not an abstract substance, it is as solid as a Christmas cake I can cut it in slices and hand it round and there is still plenty left, for tomorrow.
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I don't trust sentimentality in men it goes with tyranny you can't have one without the other.
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If happiness comes at all: which is by no means prearranged it comes by the way, while you are seeking for something else. Something outside yourself, beyond yourself: in a brief absorption of self-forgetfulness.
Caitlin Thomas