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Beware the fictionist writing his own life. Even candor becomes a strategy.

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
Beware
Strategy
Becomes
Writing
Even
Life
Candor

More quotes by 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.
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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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Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
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I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find.
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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 American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.
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The spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick.
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If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.
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Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.
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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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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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Even the God of Calvin never judged anyone as harshly as married couples judge each other.
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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.
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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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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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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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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.
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Mushy reviews are a breach of faith
Wilfrid Sheed