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All Writers Who Can Claim To Be Called 'living' Must Be Political In A Sense. They Must Have What The Quakers Call A Concern To Understand What Is Happening In The World, And Must Engage Themselves, In Their Writing, To Promote No Comfortable Lies, Of The Sort Which People Will Pay Well To Be Told Rather Than The Truth.

-Storm Jameson

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All Writers Who Can

Storm Jameson

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All Writers Who Can Claim To Be Called 'living' Must Be Political In A Sense. They Must Have What The Quakers Call A Concern To Understand What Is Happening In The World, And Must Engage Themselves, In Their Writing, To Promote No Comfortable Lies, Of The Sort Which People Will Pay Well To Be Told Rather Than The Truth.

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... The Truth Is Exactly That Which Can't Be Got Into Words. We Are Forced To Lie, A Little Or, If We Are Inferior, Much.

There Is As Much Vanity In Self-scourgings As In Self-justification.

Self Justification

Any Marriage Worth The Name Is No Better Than A Series Of Beginnings - Many Of Them Abortive.

Is It Really Beyond Our Wits To Devise Some Form Of Censorship Which Would Trap Only The Crudely Sadistic?

Nationalism Will Keep Its Venom Until We Succeed In Creating An Image Of The Nations Of The Whole World As So Many Provinces.

... The Whole Of Society In Washington Is To Some Degree Political. It Is Like No Other Capital City Known To Me, In That Political Thinking, The Whole Business, Technical And Personal, Of Politics, Is Not Diluted By An Equal Interest In Art, Industry, Amusement, Anything You Like. I Don't Meant That These Are Non-existent In Washington -- Only That They Are Subdued To The Ruling Passion.

You Can't Argue With A Raging Want. You Can, But It Is Useless.

Each Time That I Have Run Away - And From A Habit It Quickly Became An Illness - I Have Betrayed Someone. Myself, But Not Always Only Myself.

The Critic's Hankering To Be Law-giver Rather Than Servant Of Literature Is Irrepressible.

She Did Not So Much Cook As Assassinate Food.

There Is Only One World The World Pressing Against You This Minute.

In My Firm, We Dealt In Lies. Advertising Is That ... The Skilful Use Of The Truth To Mislead, To Spoil, To Debase.

Inevitably, The Flood Of Literary Pornography Loosed On Us Is Dulling Our Reactions Of Surprise Or Shock. Its Writers Are Forced To Raise The Ante, To Provide Stronger And Stronger Stimulants. Or Try To Provide Them, Since Both The Manner, The Naming Of Parts And The Few Inexpressive Four-letter Words, And The Matter, Are Narrowly Limited.

Giving The Utmost Of Herself To Three Absorbing Interests [marriage, Motherhood, Career] ... Was A Problem For A Superwoman, And A Job For A Superwoman, And Only Some Such Fabled Being Could Have Accomplished It With Success.

As Often As Not Our Whole Self...engages Itself In The Most Trivial Of Things, The Shape Of A Particular Hill, A Road In The Town In Which We Lived As Children, The Movement Of Wind In Grass. The Things We Shall Take With Us When We Die Will Nearly All Be Small Things.

I Am Never Happier Than When I Am Alone In A Foreign City; It Is As If I Had Become Invisible.

My Mind Is Not Suited To Go Much Into Company.

From So Much Of This Seriously-intended Pornography There Rises, Even When It Is Lewdly Or Boisterously Comic, The Acrid Smell, Unmistakable, Of Self-dislike.

Critics Have Been Amusing Themselves For A Long Time By Auscultating Fiction For Signs Of Heart Failure.

A Politician Is Forced To Make A Habit Of Noble Phrases And Optimistic Lies. In The End They Infect Himself.

Sadistic Literature Is Not Only Inhumane. It Is Anti-human.

I Do Not Think About Absent Persons As Often Or With Such Intense Longing As I Think Of Places. They Lie One Below The Other In My Mind.

To Reject Censorship After Studying The Risks Involved Is Very Well. To Reject It Ex Cathedra, In The Tones Of Calvin Pronouncing A Dogma, Eyes And Mind Closed To The Possible Consequences, The Even Marginally Possible, Is To Make Things Too Comfortable For Oneself.

All Writers Who Can Claim To Be Called 'living' Must Be Political In A Sense. They Must Have What The Quakers Call A Concern To Understand What Is Happening In The World, And Must Engage Themselves, In Their Writing, To Promote No Comfortable Lies, Of The Sort Which People Will Pay Well To Be Told Rather Than The Truth.

Women Will Always Put Persons Above Ideas ... And So They'll Always Be Defeated. Persons Die, And Ideas Rule The World.

Invaders Always Destroy Libraries.

The Older I Grow The More Sharply I Mistrust Words. So Few Of Them Have Any Meaning Left. It Is Impossible To Write One Sentence In Which Every Word Has The Bareness And Hardness Of Bones, The Reality Of The Skeleton.

A Joke Is A Joke Or The Image Of A Truth.

Surprise Will Be My Last Emotion, Not Fear.

... The Stomach Is Near The Heart And One Appetite Pricks On Another.

The Least Stupid Question A Man Asks In His Lifetime Is Not: Is There A God And Is He A God Or A Devil? But: Brother, Why Are You Killing Me?

Perhaps This Is In The End What Most Marriages Are - Gentleness, Memory, And Habit.

Language Is One Of The Thin Walls Humanity Has Built Up Over Centuries Against Its Own Bestial And Destructive Impulses.

If The Novel Is Dying, I See No Chance That Dismembering It Will Revive It.

If You Think With Enough Energy About A Hoped-for Event, It Will In The End Happen. Not Because You Willed It. Because It Was All The Time In Your Nature.

The Writer - More Especially The Novelist - Who Has Not, At One Moment Or Another, Considered His Publisher Unworthy Of Him, Has Still To Be Conceived.

Not Literature Alone, But Society Itself Is Wormed And Rotten When Language Ceases To Be Respected Not Merely By Advertisers And Politicians, But By Persons Of Learning And Authority.

The Sex Even In Serious Pornography Has Less Singularity Than The Mating Of Squirrels.

The Hunger Of The Spirit For Eternity - As Fierce As A Starving Man's For Bread - Is Much Less A Craving To Go On Living Than A Craving For Redemption. Oh, And A Protest Against Absurdity.

Think Of All The Really Successful Men And Women You Know. Do You Know A Single One Who Didn't Learn Very Young The Trick Of Calling Attention To Himself In The Right Quarters?

I Am Persuaded That Not A Novel In Ten Thousand Is Of Any Use To A Child To Fit Him For Life. The Most Are Of Use Only To Unfit Him -- To Blunt His Senses And Infect Him With The Writers' Poor Silly Sentiments. Nine Out Of Ten Novelists Deserve To Be Prosecuted Under An Adulterated Emotions Act.

War, For Any Cause, Is Inexcusable. There Is Nothing Which Excuses Us For The Beastly Ingenuity Of Our Wars. Only Fools, Only The Diseased, Think That We Are Served By Killing The Strong Young Men With Machines.

Hope Is A Talent Like Any Other.

Fear Is The Deep Motive Of Abstract Art - Fear Of A Repellent Civilization Which Is Dominated By The Power Of Things. ... Who Can Be Surprised If, More Sensitive Than The Others, The Artist Is Terrified By The Power Things Have Acquired Over Us?

What I Do Not Know And Cannot Even Hope To Understand Before I Die Is Why Human Beings Are Willfully, Coldly, Matter-of-factly Cruel To Each Other ... What Nerve Has Atrophied In The Torturer, Or Worse Is Sensually Moved?

Language Is Memory And Metaphor.

Writing Was A Chimney For My Blazing Ambitions.

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... We Do Not Remember People As They Were. What We Remember Is The Effect They Had On Us Then, But We Remember It Through An Emotion Charged With All That Has Since Happened To Us.

No One Asks Public Men To Be Strictly Moral, But They Must Seem To Be Well-behaved.

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The Gesture With Which One Generation Guards The Next Is The Movement, And The Only Time We See It Clearly, Of Life Itself.

Lord, If There Is A Heartache Vienna Cannot Cure I Hope Never To Feel It. I Came Home Cured Of Everything Except Vienna.

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One Of The Uncovenanted Benefits Of Living For A Long Time Is That, Having So Many More Dead Than Living Friends, Death Can Appear As A Step Backwards Into The Joyous Past.

A Writer's First Duty Is To Be Clear. Clarity Is An Excellent Virtue. Like All Virtues It Can Be Pursued At Ruinous Cost. Paid, So Far As I Am Concerned, Joyfully.

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All Pornography Is To A Degree Sadistic - Inevitably.

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The Impossible Talked Of Is Less Impossible From The Moment Words Are Laid To It.

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... I Used Words Without Precautions. I Wanted To Disappear Into Them, I Fled Into The Bovaryism Of The Writer Trying To Create An Effect.

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Nothing Lasts. Not Even A Great Sorrow.

Failures To Love Are Irremediable And Irredeemable.

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