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The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.

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
Talk
Country
People
Delicately
Treat
Treats
Worse

More quotes by Wilfrid Sheed

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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.
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If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.
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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.
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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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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.
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Even the God of Calvin never judged anyone as harshly as married couples judge each other.
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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?
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Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
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Books about suicide make lousy gifts.
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Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.
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Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.
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The spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick.
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Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.
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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.
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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.
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Whether or not Big Brother is watching us, we certainly have to watch him, which may be even worse.
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Mushy reviews are a breach of faith
Wilfrid Sheed
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It is possible that the malice of writers has been overrated (by myself among others). Reading their ruminations on their craft, one sees why this writer could not possibly like that one, would indeed consider him a menace. Literature is a battleground of conflicting faiths, and nobler passions than envy are involved.
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The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.
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