Wilfrid Sheed: Trending quotes

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Wilfrid Sheed: 100 quotes0 likes

“He was truly after an art in which the creator could be as intelligent as he liked, but in which intelligence must be transmuted entirely into form, so that no lumps of thinking are left showing.”

"Ernest Hemingway" (1977), p. 240
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“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.”

"Now That Men Can Cry...," p. 299
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“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.”

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

“This country is merciless to good small talents. A writer who doesn't take chances and swing for the fences (whether or not he has a prayer of reaching them) is less than a man.”

"Letters of E. B. White" (1976), p. 251
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“Beware the fictionist writing his own life. Even candor becomes a strategy.”

"V. S. Pritchett: Midnight Oil" (1972), p. 223
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“Off she'd go to the hospital, a place I believe she secretly liked because they treat you like a child there.”

"Miss Jean Stafford," p. 71
Essays in Disguise (1990)

“Standing still as a statue in the October shadows, he looked, grotesquely, more like a patriot than anything usually seen on a baseball field. A trick of light perhaps. Yet what famous athlete last died for a cause bigger than himself? Clemente could sometimes seem like a pest, a nagging narcissist, with only his burningly serious play to deny it. Yet when that plane crashed carrying relief supplies to Nicaragua we saw what he had meant all along. It was like the old Clemente crashing into the right field wall in a losing game: the act of a totally serious man.
By chance I met Clemente once, in the humble role of autograph-seeker. He was doing wind sprints down at the Pirate training camp in Bradenton, Florida. And although I claimed I was getting an autograph for my son (true, for a change), he looked at me with a hidalgo’s contempt – at a grown man simpering over a blunt pencil; he turned his back abruptly and did another wind sprint, then slashed his name onto my scorecard and sauntered away. To hell with you, Clemente, I thought. But on the way out, I saw him funning with three old ladies from Allentown, Pennsylvania, and I have never seen sweeter courtesy.”

From the foreword to Clemente! (1973) by Kal Wagenheim

“A deadly streak of passivity of a kind that sometimes goes with perfectionism.”

"Miss Jean Stafford," p. 71
Essays in Disguise (1990)

“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).”

"Dirty Business" (1973), p. 83
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“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
"Dirty Business" (1973), p. 83
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)