“Words like “spokesman” and “touchstone” took me completely by surprise.”
Paris Review interview (1986)
Context: Words like “spokesman” and “touchstone” took me completely by surprise. For very real reasons. Not only had I been out of the country when my first two books were published, but I have always been “out of the country” in the sense that I never had what ordinarily is thought of as a literary life, or been part of a literary group. What psychiatrists nowadays call a support system. I never had any of that and still don’t.
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Karl Shapiro 15
Poet, essayist 1913–2000Related quotes

“Nothing unites two people so completely, especially if, like you and me, all they have is words.”
Source: Letters to Felice

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
Quoted in: Peter Erskine, Rick Mattingly (1998), Drum Perspective, p. 73.
Alternative forms:
"At eight, I was Raphael", he used to say. "It took me a whole lifetime to paint like a child"
From Picasso, my grandfather, Marina Picasso (2001).
Attributed from posthumous publications

"Lewandowski exclusive, pt II: 'We're stronger now'" https://www.bundesliga.com/en/news/Bundesliga/noblmd09-fc-bayern-muenchen-robert-lewandowski-exclusive-interview.jsp (2016)