Quote

Books about suicide make lousy gifts.

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
Suicide
Books
Book
Make
Lousy
Gifts

More quotes by Wilfrid Sheed

Image
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.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
The actual Irish weather report is really a recording made in 1922, which no one has had occasion to change. Scattered showers, periods of sunshine.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
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
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
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
Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Mushy reviews are a breach of faith
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Whether or not Big Brother is watching us, we certainly have to watch him, which may be even worse.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
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
Image
Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.
Wilfrid Sheed
Image
Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.
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
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
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
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
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.
Wilfrid Sheed