Malcolm Cowley Quotes & Sayings

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. — Malcolm Cowley

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. — Malcolm Cowley

The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood. — Malcolm Cowley

Everywhere was the atmosphere of a long debauch that had to end; the orchestras played too fast, the stakes were too high at the gambling tables, the players were so empty, so tired, secretly hoping to vanish together into sleep and ... maybe wake on a very distant morning and hear nothing, whatever, no shouting or crooning, find all things changed. — Malcolm Cowley

Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures. — Malcolm Cowley

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. — Malcolm Cowley

Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens. — Malcolm Cowley

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. — Malcolm Cowley

Age is not different from earlier life as long as you're sitting down. — Malcolm Cowley

They were learning that New York had another life, too - subterranean, like almost everything that was human in the city - a life of writers meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started or magazines unpublished, and even to lay modest plans for the future. Modestly they were beginning to write poems worth the trouble of reading to their friends over coffee cups. Modestly they were rebelling once more. — Malcolm Cowley

But you drank your black coffee by choice, believeng that Paris was sufficient alcohol. — Malcolm Cowley

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. — Malcolm Cowley

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. — Malcolm Cowley

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. — Malcolm Cowley

It would have been the equivalent of Jackson Pollock's attempts to copy the Sistine Chapel. — Malcolm Cowley

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. — Malcolm Cowley

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. — Malcolm Cowley

There would seem to be four stages in the composition of a story. First comes the germ of the story, then a period of more or less conscious meditation, then the first draft, and finally the revision, which may be simply 'pencil work' as John O'Hara calls it - that is, minor changes in wording - or may lead to writing several drafts and what amounts to a new work. — Malcolm Cowley

Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you. — Malcolm Cowley

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. — Malcolm Cowley

No complete son of a bitch ever wrote a good sentence. — Malcolm Cowley