Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wilfrid Sheed
Age: 80 †
Born: 1930
Born: December 27
Died: 2011
Died: January 19
Novelist
London
England
Wilfrid John Joseph Sheed
People
Function
Subjects
Writer
Talent
Neutral
Talk
Functions
Though
Applied
Anything
Narrow
Find
Substance

More quotes by Wilfrid Sheed

Image
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
Image
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
Image
The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
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
Image
Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Mushy reviews are a breach of faith
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
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.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Beware the fictionist writing his own life. Even candor becomes a strategy.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
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.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
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
Image
If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
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.
Wilfrid Sheed