Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 73
Context: There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i. e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything.
“We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too,
But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you;
An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints.”
Tommy, Stanza 4.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)
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Rudyard Kipling 200
English short-story writer, poet, and novelist 1865–1936Related quotes
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“Artists who don't paint aren't artists.”
Milner, Frank (ed): The Stuckists Punk Victorian [National Museums Liverpool, 2005], p. 134
From The Stuckist Manifesto (1999) co-written with Billy Childish
“Artists who don't paint aren't artists.”
Milner, Frank (ed): The Stuckists Punk Victorian [National Museums Liverpool, 2005], p. 134
From The Stuckist Manifesto, (1999) co-written with Charles Thomson
Explaining why he never tried to lose weight.
Toledo Blade, Aug 20, 1978 http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19780820&id=UDBPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=fgIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6371,746427