WILFRID SHEED

Every writer is a writer of the generation before.

The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.

One reason the human race has such a low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.

I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.

Mankind has always made too much of its saints and heroes, and how the latter handle the fuss might be called their final test.

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.

Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.

The spiritual life becomes very simple when you're sick.

Whether or not Big Brother is watching us, we certainly have to watch him, which may be even worse.

The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.

It is a fallacy to think that carping is the strongest form of criticism: the important work begins after the artist's mistakes have been pointed out, and the reviewer can't put it off indefinitely with sneers, although some neophytes might be tempted to try: "When in doubt, stick out your tongue" is a safe rule that never cost one any readers. But there's nothing strong about it, and it has nothing to do with the real business of criticism, which is to do justice to the best work of one's time, so that nothing gets lost.

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?

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.

The town is as full as ever of 'characters,' all created by each other.

Baseball fans are pedants, there is no other kind.

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).

As you approach the presidency, no one seems worthy of it, since it wasn't designed for a human in the first place.