Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wilfrid Sheed
Age: 80 †
Born: 1930
Born: December 27
Died: 2011
Died: January 19
Novelist
London
England
Wilfrid John Joseph Sheed
Point
Artificial
Seems
Symbols
Whole
Miss
Obvious
Case
Missing
Seem
Cases

More quotes by Wilfrid Sheed

Image
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.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
For now, I'm supposing that all movements are equal, which they're not, except in this respect: that none of them gives a damn about artists beyond their immediate utility. Good movements will use a writer just as ruthlessly as bad ones since they all fancy they have better things to do than worry about one man's artistic survival.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Books about suicide make lousy gifts.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Even the God of Calvin never judged anyone as harshly as married couples judge each other.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
You noodle around with tempo and sound until you get the perfect fit for that particular song, and then, so long as you can sustain it, God is on your side and everything comes easily and even the waiters smile.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
As things now stand, the office is a slightly meaner battleground than the home. Male bosses seem to dominate their women underlings as they would never dominate their wives.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
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).
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
I rail against writers who talk about the loneliness of it all — what do they want, a crowd looking over their typewriters? Or those who talk about having to stare at a blank page — do they want someone to write on it?
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
How does one make a movie about decadence these days? Now that we're allowed to do it, it's too late.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Beware the fictionist writing his own life. Even candor becomes a strategy.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
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
Image
Mr Michener, as timeless as a stack of 'National Geographics,' is the ultimate Summer Writer. Just as one goes back to the cottage in Maine, so one goes back to one's Michener.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
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
Image
Mushy reviews are a breach of faith
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Scott Fitzgerald is a sound you like to hear at certain times of the day, say at four in the afternoon and again late at night, and at other times it makes you slightly sick.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
The spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
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.
Wilfrid Sheed