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The quotations are arranged by author name.
Current counts: Authors: 8,146. Quotations: 38,970
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| Cyril Connolly
A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out. A writer is in danger of allowing his talent to dull who lets more than a year go past without finding himself in his rightful place of composition, the small single unluxurious retreat of the twentieth century, the hotel bedroom. Civilization is maintained by a very few people in a small number of places and we need only some bombs and a few prisons to blot it out altogether. Everything is a dangerous drug except reality, which is unendurable. Hate is the consequence of fear; we fear something before we hate it; a child who fears noises becomes a man who hates noise. Idleness is only a coarse name for my infinite capacity for living in the present. Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out. It is a mistake to expect good work from expatriates for it is not what they do that matters but what they are not doing. It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book. Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turn before we have learnt to walk. No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning. Nothing dates like hate and in literature a little of it goes a very long way. The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure. The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above. The one way to get thin is to re-establish a purpose in life. The only way for writers to meet is to share a quick peek over a common lamp-post. The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up. The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore. The true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and no other task is of any consequence. The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife. Truth is a river that is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between the arms the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the main river. Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster. Youth is a period of missed opportunities. |
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