“The mark of a great writer: who sees his own time, but with a detachment that makes him communicable to other ages.”
2:579
"Quotes", Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2002)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Northrop Frye 137
Canadian literary critic and literary theorist 1912–1991Related quotes
“There are only two things a child will share willingly—communicable diseases and his mother's age.”
Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care (1945)
Carl MacDougall, "Reformers and radicals in Scottish literature" http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/arts/writingscotland/learning_journeys/reformers_and_radicals/.
Criticism
Nobel Prize Speech (1954)
Context: No writer who knows the great writers who did not receive the Prize can accept it other than with humility. There is no need to list these writers. Everyone here may make his own list according to his knowledge and his conscience.
As quoted in "From Bach to Kafka, or... about temptation - An interview by Emil Bassat http://darl.eu/intervie/84_05_30.htm" in Sofia News (30 May 1984).
Emile, or On Education (1762), Book III
“I went from a comedian who wrote his own material to a writer who performed his own material.”
New York Times Interview, 1995
Interviews, Print Interviews
Context: After "Jammin' In New York", I went from a comedian who wrote his own material to a writer who performed his own material... I became socially conscious, and found I had something to say that wasn't too common.
“Judge — A law student who marks his own examination-papers.”
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)