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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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Wilfrid Sheed
Age: 80 †
Born: 1930
Born: December 27
Died: 2011
Died: January 19
Novelist
London
England
Wilfrid John Joseph Sheed
Whole
Miss
Obvious
Case
Missing
Seem
Cases
Point
Artificial
Seems
Symbols
More quotes by Wilfrid Sheed
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.
Wilfrid Sheed
Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
Wilfrid Sheed
Mushy reviews are a breach of faith
Wilfrid Sheed
Books about suicide make lousy gifts.
Wilfrid Sheed
Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.
Wilfrid Sheed
Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test.
Wilfrid Sheed
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
The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.
Wilfrid Sheed
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
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
The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.
Wilfrid Sheed
Of course, history is only a muddle of facts and a fuddle of professors, and anyone who thinks it is one clear voice saying Arise, sir Knight deserves a life sentence in Camelot.
Wilfrid Sheed
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
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
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
Whether or not Big Brother is watching us, we certainly have to watch him, which may be even worse.
Wilfrid Sheed
I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find.
Wilfrid Sheed
Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.
Wilfrid Sheed
Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.
Wilfrid Sheed
Even the God of Calvin never judged anyone as harshly as married couples judge each other.
Wilfrid Sheed
