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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

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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
Life
Courses
Deserves
Course
Professors
Anyone
Sentence
Clear
Arise
Voice
Sentences
Camelot
History
Thinks
Muddle
Facts
Deserve
Knight
Thinking
Saying
Knights

More quotes by 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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Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
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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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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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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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The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.
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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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The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.
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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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Whether or not Big Brother is watching us, we certainly have to watch him, which may be even worse.
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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.
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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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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 spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick.
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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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If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.
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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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Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.
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Beware the fictionist writing his own life. Even candor becomes a strategy.
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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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