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

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Even the God of Calvin never judged anyone as harshly as married couples judge each other.
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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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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.
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The spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick.
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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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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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The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.
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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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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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Mushy reviews are a breach of faith
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Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
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Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.
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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 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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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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Books about suicide make lousy gifts.
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Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.
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Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.
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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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