Malcolm Cowley Quotes
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It would have been the equivalent of Jackson Pollock's attempts to copy the Sistine Chapel.
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Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.
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Age is not different from earlier life as long as you're sitting down.
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Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens.
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Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.
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They tell you that you'll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don't tell you is that you won't miss it very much.
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I never cease to be amazed why some of my friends became famous and others, just as talented, didn't. I've come to suspect it's a matter of wanting fame or not, and those who don't want it, don't get it.
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Put cotton in your ears and pebbles in your shoes. Pull on rubber gloves. Smear Vaseline over your glasses, and there you have it: instant old age.
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Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.
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In matters like writing and painting, a man does what he has to do - if he has to write, why then, he writes; and if he doesn't feel the urgent need of writing, there are dozens of professions in which it is easier to earn a comfortable living.
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Going back to Hemingway's work after several years is like going back to a brook where you had often fished and finding the woods as deep and cool as they used to be.
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The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood.
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First New York was a sort of provincial capital, bigger and richer than Manchester or Marseilles, but not much different in its essential spirit. Then, after the war, it became one among half a dozen world cities. Today it has the appearance of standing alone, as the center of culture in the part of the world that still tries to be civilized.
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It is the fear of being as dependent as a young child, while not being loved as a child is loved, but merely being kept alive against one's will.
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Any fiction should be a story. In any story there are three elements: persons, a situation, and the fact that in the end something has changed. If nothing has changed, it isn't a story.
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A man rising in the world is not concerned with history; he is too busy making it. But a citizen with a fixed place in the community wants to acquire a glorious past just as he acquires antique furniture. By that past he is reassured of his present importance; in it he finds strength to face the dangers that lie in front of him.