Wilfrid Sheed: Trending quotes (page 2)

“As enviable and unreachable as a face in a train window.”

Wilfrid Sheed

"James Thurber: Men, Women, and Dogs," p. 228
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Training

“That is the best story he could find in his life, never mind if it's the truest: an artist's duty is always to tell the best story.”

Wilfrid Sheed

"V. S. Pritchett: Midnight Oil," p. 227
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Life

“Not that there weren't real communists in the labor unions, and real spies in Washington, but these had nothing to do with the show that was being put on for us, which seemed entirely designed to Make Us Take This Thing Seriously. From abroad, where I was for much of the time, it looked as if the United States were trying to act like a superpower by holding its very own show trials.”

Wilfrid Sheed

"Program Notes," p. xiv
Essays in Disguise (1990)

Time

“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

"Miami 1972" (1972), p. 283
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America.”

Wilfrid Sheed

"Now That Men Can Cry..." (1977), p. 290
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Life

“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

"On Keeping Closets Closed" (1973), p. 76
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“How does one make a movie about decadence these days? Now that we're allowed to do it, it's too late.”

Wilfrid Sheed

"I Am a Cabaret" (1972), p. 203
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“Professor Bell, in his tortured efforts to sound fair and impersonal, arrives at an aesthetic principle too edifying for Art to bear. He says in effect that you can explore evil, drawing "on the tap roots of the demonic," but you may not approve it. But when you draw on those tap roots, who knows what you will find? Writers just back from their season in hell are likely to be covered in goat blood and tend to rave. The moralists can sort out the evidence later. But the writer with the correct attitude could not have entered hell in the first place.”

Wilfrid Sheed

"Honoring Ezra Pound" (1972), p. 59
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Art , Hell , Effort , Evil

“His interviewing self is, or was, an extra person, like the Holy Ghost, generated by self-contemplation.”

Wilfrid Sheed

"The Interview as Art" (1976), p. 208
Referring to W. H. Auden
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Personality

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

Wilfrid Sheed

"The Aesthetics of Politics," p. 156
Essays in Disguise (1990)

“What he feared most was the blind spot between us and the future, the space between identities where we could get lost forever.”

Wilfrid Sheed

"George Orwell, Artist" (1972), p. 46
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Fear , Future

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

Wilfrid Sheed

"Men's Women, Women's Men" (1971), p. 137
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

People , Country

“When a reviewer says that Malamud is second only to Bellow, it means he really isn't thinking about either of them. When he's reading Malamud he's thinking about Bellow, and when he's reading Bellow he's thinking about Roth. This is the essence of the ratings game: distraction. Children play it all the time. "Is this the biggest bridge in the world?" "No, it's the third biggest." "Oh."”

Wilfrid Sheed

They lose all interest in the bridge.
"The Art of Reviewing" (1973), p. 10
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Children , World , Game , Thinking

“Carmichael was, like many Americans, a divided soul, part nomad and part homebody, who seemed a little bit at home everywhere, but was probably more so someplace else, if he could just find it.”

Wilfrid Sheed

The House That George Built (2007)

Home , Soul , Parting

“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

"Baseball Was Very, Very Good to Him," The New York Times (2000-10-29)

“The one kind of society that the Church cannot adjust to is no society at all, i. e., a setup where community has become so fragmented that a communal religion is a fiction, sustained only by talk and make-news items in the press and television.”

Wilfrid Sheed

"Church," p. 120
Essays in Disguise (1990)

Religion , Communication

“It had always been a notion of mine that sanity is like a clearing in the jungle where the humans agree to meet from time to time and behave in certain fixed ways that even a baboon could master, like Englishmen dressing for dinner in the tropics.”

Wilfrid Sheed

In Love with Daylight (1995)

Way , Time

“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.”

Wilfrid Sheed

"Program Notes," pp. xvi-xvii
Essays in Disguise (1990)

Justice , Business , Thinking , Strong

“The best comedy is always heartless, an alternative to rational emotion.”

Wilfrid Sheed

"The Wit of George S. Kaufman and Dorothy Parker," p. 162
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“The desire not to destroy the palace but to move into it oneself has always been the occupational curse of revolutionaries.”

Wilfrid Sheed

"Writers' Politics" (1971), p. 66
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)