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

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.
Wilfrid Sheed
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Beware the fictionist writing his own life. Even candor becomes a strategy.
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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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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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Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.
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Even the God of Calvin never judged anyone as harshly as married couples judge each other.
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Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.
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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Mushy reviews are a breach of faith
Wilfrid Sheed
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Books about suicide make lousy gifts.
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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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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.
Wilfrid Sheed
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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?
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
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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.
Wilfrid Sheed
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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.
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.
Wilfrid Sheed
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The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.
Wilfrid Sheed
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Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
Wilfrid Sheed