The happiest excitement in life is to be convinced that one is fighting for all one is worth on behalf of some clearly seen and de...eply felt good, and against some greatly scorned evil.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Such is the art of writing as Dreiser understands it and practices it--an endless piling up of minutiae, an almost ferocious track...ing down of ions, electrons and molecules, an unshakable determination to tell it all. One is amazed by the mole-like diligence of the man, and no less by his exasperating disregard for the ease of his readers.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Hemingway, wrote [Edmund] Wilson, was "his own worst-drawn character," by which we must assume that this hunter-bullfighter-war-lo...ving he-man failed to meet the classic specifications of a literary construct; he had no depth, not enough curious contradictions, represented not a concatenation of qualities but a single one played to the hilt. In short, he was what popular novelists (and movies, of course) give us, a type not an individ ual. It was the same way with Monroe. She had taken her basic bimbo's understanding of the world, and her instinct for leveraging it, and played her bimbohood for all it was worth, just as any popular novelist would have, and for the same reason: it represented her full understanding of the character, the best that she could do with it, and we sensed that she was not cheating or talking down to us through it, even though it read easily and did not tax us as it touched us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One would say that a true Englishman could speculate only within bounds. (It is true the Americans have proved that they, in more ...than one sense, can speculate without bounds.) He has to pay his respects to so many things, that, before he knows it, he may have paid away all he is worth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is dangerous to leave written that which is badly written. A chance word, upon paper, may destroy the world. Watch carefully an...d erase, while the power is still yours, I say to myself, for all that is put down, once it escapes, may rot its way into a thousand minds, the corn become a black smut, and all libraries, of necessity, be burned to the ground as a consequence. Only one answer: write carelessly so that nothing that is not green will survive.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The greatest and truest models for all orators ... is Demosthenes. One who has not studied deeply and constantly all the great spe...eches of the great Athenian, is not prepared to speak in public. Only as the constant companion of Demosthenes, Burke, Fox, Canning and Webster, can we hope to become orators.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Over, over, there is a soft place in my heart for all that is over, no, for the being over, words have been my only loves, not man...y.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The kiss of the sun for pardon, The song of the birds for mirth,--... One is nearer God's heart in a garden Than anywhere else on earth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I never enjoyed any business or mode of life as much as I do this. I really feel badly when I think of several of my intimate frie...nds who are compelled to stay at home. These marches and campaigns in the hills of western Virginia will always be among the pleasantest things I can remember. I know we are in frequent perils, that we may never return and all that, but the feeling that I am where I ought to be is a full compensation for all that is sinister, leaving me free to enjoy as if on a pleasure tour.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »