What's terrible is to pretend that second-rate is first-rate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better.
From Doris Lessing
What is a hero without love for mankind.
Man, who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!
My father was in the First World War.
The Nobel Prize is run by a self-perpetuated committee. They vote for themselves and get the world's publishing industry to jump to their tune.
Sentimentality is intolerable because it is false feeling.
I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'
What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.
When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.
There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to.
6 perspectives
4 perspectives
3 perspectives
2 perspectives
1 perspectives