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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
Writing
Even
Life
Candor
Beware
Strategy
Becomes

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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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The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.
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If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.
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Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test.
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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.
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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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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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How does one make a movie about decadence these days? Now that we're allowed to do it, it's too late.
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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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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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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 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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Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
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The spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick.
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Mushy reviews are a breach of faith
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Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.
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Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.
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The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.
Wilfrid Sheed