Quote

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

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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
Men
Worry
Except
Movements
Since
Equal
Immediate
Use
Beyond
Fancy
Artist
Ones
Damn
Better
Writer
Artistic
Giving
Gives
Survival
Ruthlessly
Good
Movement
Artists
Supposing
Things
Respect
None
Utility

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The spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick.
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The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.
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Books about suicide make lousy gifts.
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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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Mushy reviews are a breach of faith
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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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Even the God of Calvin never judged anyone as harshly as married couples judge each other.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.
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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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I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find.
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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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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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