Quoted in Roche, James Jeffrey (1891). Life of John Boyle O'Reilly, together with his complete poems and speeches edited by Mrs John Boyle O'Reilly. New York. p 195.
“The purpose of a writer is to keep civilisation from destroying itself."
(Interview,, September 14, 1958)”
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Bernard Malamud 19
American author 1914–1986Related quotes
The Haunted Bookshop (1919)
Context: Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.
http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/macaulay/txt_commons_indiagovt_1833.html#13
Attributed
“Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from being vulgar, in point of style.”
Specimens of the table talk of the late Samuel Taylor Coleridge, June 14, 1830, (1835) p. 177
“The purpose of a writer is to make revolution irresistible.”
Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 55.
Source: Song lyrics, The Dreaming (1982)