Quote

A good writer preserves an air of freedom in his prose, so that the reader won't know how a story will end - even if he's reading a history book.

Thornton Wilder

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thornton Wilder
Age: 78 †
Born: 1897
Born: April 17
Died: 1975
Died: December 7
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Madison
Wisconsin
Thornton Niven Wilder
Even
Writer
Good
Reading
Story
Freedom
History
Preserves
Ends
Prose
Stories
Air
Book
Reader

More quotes by Thornton Wilder

Image
Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don't talk in English and don't even want to.
Thornton Wilder
Image
On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Where there is an unknowable, there is a promise.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners - your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards - who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.
Thornton Wilder
Image
There is no drunkenness equal to that of remembering whispered words in the night.
Thornton Wilder
Image
How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you rip the fronts off houses you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?
Thornton Wilder
Image
Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Throughout the hours of the night, though there had been few to hear it, the whole sky had been loud with the singing of these constellations.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Every writer is necessarily a critic - that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on. The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg - nine-tenths of him is under water.
Thornton Wilder
Image
A man looks pretty small at a wedding, George. All those good women standing shoulder to shoulder, making sure that the knot's tied in a mighty public way.
Thornton Wilder
Image
All that we know about those we have loved and lost is that they would wish us to remember them with a more intensified realization of their reality. What is essential does not die but clarifies. The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.
Thornton Wilder
Image
We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Choose the least important day in your life. It will be important enough.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.
Thornton Wilder
Image
you have to love life to have life, and you need to have life to love life
Thornton Wilder
Image
Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Leadership is for those who love the public good and are endowed and trained to administer it.
Thornton Wilder
Image
Many plays - certainly mine - are like blank checks. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
Thornton Wilder
Image
A sense of humor judges one's actions and the actions of others from a wider reference. It pardons shortcomings, it consoles failure.
Thornton Wilder