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I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find.

Wilfrid Sheed

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Wilfrid Sheed
Age: 80 †
Born: 1930
Born: December 27
Died: 2011
Died: January 19
Novelist
London
England
Wilfrid John Joseph Sheed
Picked
Died
Find
Writing
Consolation

More quotes by Wilfrid Sheed

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Unlike most wars, which make rotten fiction in themselves - all plot and no characters, or made-up characters - Vietnam seems to be the perfect mix: the characters make the war, and the war unmakes the characters. The gods, fates, furies had a relatively small hand in it. The mess was man-made, a synthetic, by think tank out of briefing session.
Wilfrid Sheed
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For Catholics before Vatican II, the land of the free was pre-eminently the land of Sister Says-except, of course, for Sister, for whom it was the land of Father Says.
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People talk about talent as though it were some neutral substance that can be applied to anything. But talent is narrow and only functions with a very few subjects, which it is up to the writer to find.
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Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.
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Even the God of Calvin never judged anyone as harshly as married couples judge each other.
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The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.
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Censors will try to censor a little bit more each year (because, like editors and other officious people, censors don't feel they are getting anywhere unless they are up and doing).
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Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.
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Books about suicide make lousy gifts.
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The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.
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How does one make a movie about decadence these days? Now that we're allowed to do it, it's too late.
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The 1930s - a Golden Age for American humor, mainly because everything else was going so badly. The wisecrack was the basic American sentence because there were so many things that could not be said any other way.
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Mushy reviews are a breach of faith
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Beware the fictionist writing his own life. Even candor becomes a strategy.
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It's the old case against symbols: if you get them, they seem obvious and artificial, and if you don't, you miss the whole point.
Wilfrid Sheed
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The spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick.
Wilfrid Sheed
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As you approach the presidency, no one seems worthy of it, since it wasn't designed for a human in the first place.
Wilfrid Sheed
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Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy - but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are palaces of misery.
Wilfrid Sheed
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The actual Irish weather report is really a recording made in 1922, which no one has had occasion to change. Scattered showers, periods of sunshine.
Wilfrid Sheed
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If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.
Wilfrid Sheed