“My whole theory of writing I can sum up in one sentence. An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.”
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F. Scott Fitzgerald 411
American novelist and screenwriter 1896–1940Related quotes
“If I could sum it up in 50 words, I wouldn't have needed to write a whole novel about it.”
“The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
Source: The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Section 2, paragraph 13.
“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know.”
Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 2
Context: I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, "Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know."
"Literature Nobel Awarded to Writer Doris Lessing" http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15195588 All Things Considered NPR (11 October 2007)
“I wouldn't ever write the full sentence myself, but then, I never use goto either.”
[199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org, 1997]
Usenet postings, 1997
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 6
Identifying his "destroyed" personality as "Phædrus"
Context: Now I want to begin to fulfill a certain obligation by stating that there was one person, no longer here, who had something to say, and who said it, but whom no one believed or really understood. Forgotten. For reasons that will become apparent I'd prefer that he remain forgotten, but there's no choice other than to reopen his case.
I don't know his whole story. No one ever will, except Phædrus himself, and he can no longer speak. But from his writings and from what others have said and from fragments of my own recall it should be possible to piece together some kind of approximation of what he was talking about.
Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 14, “—and beat him when he sneezes”, p. 131
