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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

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The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.
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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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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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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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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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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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Mushy reviews are a breach of faith
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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Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.
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Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
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The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.
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The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.
Wilfrid Sheed
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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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Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.
Wilfrid Sheed
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Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.
Wilfrid Sheed
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Books about suicide make lousy gifts.
Wilfrid Sheed
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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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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.
Wilfrid Sheed
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Beware the fictionist writing his own life. Even candor becomes a strategy.
Wilfrid Sheed
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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.
Wilfrid Sheed