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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.

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
Possible
Sees
Overrated
Literature
Indeed
Menace
Reading
Consider
Malice
Others
Writers
Craft
Rumination
Would
Among
Passions
Battleground
Like
Writer
Crafts
Conflicting
Involved
Possibly
Faiths
Passion
Envy
Nobler

More quotes by Wilfrid Sheed

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Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
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.
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If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.
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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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Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.
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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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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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The only reason I didn't kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers in New York and I couldn't decide which one to jumo into.
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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.
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The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.
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Beware the fictionist writing his own life. Even candor becomes a strategy.
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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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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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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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The spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick.
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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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Even the God of Calvin never judged anyone as harshly as married couples judge each other.
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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.
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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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The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.
Wilfrid Sheed