Seidel Quotes & Sayings

Write beautifully what people don't want to hear. — Frederick Seidel

If the bell of intolerance tolls for one, it tolls for all. — Henry Seidel Canby

He learned to trust the Father when circumstances seemed hopeless. Christ used the tool of adversity to forge radiant joy in his spirit. — Nicholas Cappas

Joe Lelyveld told me just now that Gandhi and Mussolini
Actually met. What an extraordinary thought. — Frederick Seidel

I was left with myself and had to do the one thing I could to survive. I knew it would be difficult to write, very difficult, but I set about doing it. — Frederick Seidel

Too much is almost enough — Frederick Seidel

There is no space without aether, and no aether which does not occupy space. — Arthur Eddington

Good writing is always a breaking of the soil, clearing away prejudices, pulling up of sour weeds of crooked thinking, stripping the turf so as to get at what is fertile beneath. It would be amusing to carry the simile further. Those bulbs that flower in the sand and wither! The gay fiction annual that has to be planted again every year! Those experimental plants from Russia, France, and Greenwich Village that are always getting winter killed - confound 'em! - is it worth while planting them again? The stocky perennial that keeps coming up and coming up - so easy to grow and so ugly. Scarlet sage that gives a touch of fiery sin to the edge of the suburbanite's concrete walk! And then the good flowers - as honest as they are beautiful! The well-ordered gar den! The climbing rose that escapes and is the most beautiful of all! — Henry Seidel Canby

A short story is simplification to the highest degree — Henry Seidel Canby

And are you thinking, Hugh, what I am thinking? — Ellis Peters

One thing I know about death is that it touches my psyche and mumbles in her magnificently unknown words; it floats within me and wanders through my bones every day. — Anne Sexton

Having your head in the clouds is not a bad thing ... as long as you take advantage of the inspiration you find while you're there. — Misty Dawn Seidel

I'm going to call me girls." Sadie stood in the open doorway and yelled. "Clare, Dora, I want yiz!" The cry went up, repeated over and over again as the children playing in the street outside passed the message along. Sadie waited, sure the message would eventually reach her two girls, where ever they were playing. It was an efficient message system used by every mother around the place. — Gemma Jackson

May you never grow too old to believe in magic and fairy tales. — Misty Dawn Seidel

When my daughter was a senior in high school, I remember noticing, almost in passing, that her friends were very cute. Which made me realize her friends' fathers probably found Molly very cute. — Gene Weingarten

Live deep instead of fast. I think this is what Thoreau meant. — Henry Seidel Canby

The short story, its course plotted and its form proscribed, has become too efficient ... but efficiency is not the most, it is perhaps the least, important among the undoubted elements of good literature — Henry Seidel Canby

The function of the Short Story is to be interesting, to convey vivid impressions, an therefore it must, to a degree, work with the evident and superficial thing — Henry Seidel Canby

The Earth keeps turning, night and day, spit-roasting all the tanned
Tired icebergs and polar bears, making white almost contraband.
The biosphere on a rotisserie emits a certain sound
That tells the stars that Earth was moaning pleasure while it drowned.

- "Poem by the Bridge at Ten-Shin — Frederick Seidel

I like poems that are daggers that sing. I like poems that for all the power of the sentiments expressed, and all the power to upset and offend, are so well made that they're achieved things. However much they upset you, they also affect you. — Frederick Seidel

Reading for experience is the only reading that justifies excitement. Reading for facts is necessary bu the less said about it in public the better. Reading for distraction is like taking medicine. We do it, but it is nothing to be proud of. But reading for experience is transforming. — Henry Seidel Canby

July 4th fireworks exhale over the Hudson sadly.
It is beautiful that they have to disappear.
It's like the time you said I love you madly.
That was an hour ago. It's been a fervent year. — Frederick Seidel

The London 'Academy' has seen fit recently to scoff at the critics who have been exercising themselves ove rthe so-called art of the Short Story ... But the new Short Story has gained more individuality. It supports the magazines and has invaded the newspapers — Henry Seidel Canby

I fail to remember ever having made an effort - no trace of struggle is detectable in my life, I am the opposite of a heroic nature. To "want" something, to "strive" for something, to have an "end," a "desire" in mind - I know none of this from my experience. Even at this moment I look out upon my future - a broad future! - as upon a smooth sea: no desire ripples upon it.
Not in the least do I want anything to be different from what it is; I myself do not want to be any different ... But thus I have always lived. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Around the college had grown up in the latter nineteenth century a hap-hazard, ill-blanced collection of professional schools, attended by hard-working meagre creatures with the fun drained out of them... — Yale University

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down. — Samuel Johnson

While the novel-writer aims at an eminently natural method of transcription, the author of the short story adopts a very artificial one — Henry Seidel Canby

A top McCain policy adviser claimed this week that McCain's work in the Senate helped create the BlackBerry, saying, 'You're looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.' He then handed the BlackBerry to McCain, who attempted to withdraw $20 from it. — Amy Poehler

Don't waste any of your precious time or energy on negativity. There's no time for that nonsense. — Tanya Masse

The next day the two sisters went to the ball, and so did Cinderella, but dressed more magnificently than before. The King's son was always by her side, and his pretty speeches to her never ceased. — Charles Perrault

Ode to Spring"

I can only find words for.
And sometimes I can't.
Here are these flowers that stand for.
I stand here on the sidewalk.

I can't stand it, but yes of course I understand it.
Everything has to have meaning.
Things have to stand for something.
I can't take the time. Even skin-deep is too deep.

I say to the flower stand man:
Beautiful flowers at your flower stand, man.
I'll take a dozen of the lilies.
I'm standing as it were on my knees

Before a little man up on a raised
Runway altar where his flowers are arrayed
Along the outside of the shop.
I take my flames and pay inside.

I go off and have sexual intercourse.
The woman is the woman I love.
The room displays thirteen lilies.
I stand on the surface. — Frederick Seidel

Sometimes you finish the poem, and that last piece clicks in place. Sometimes the poem is finished with you. — Frederick Seidel

A Tax Loophole: A deduction that the other guy gets. — Malcolm Forbes

Sometimes we don't know what's best until we're forced into it. Often you can be just as happy or even happier with less. — Peter Seidel

I like to hear the sound of form, and I like to hear the sound of it breaking. — Frederick Seidel

Arrogance, pedantry, and dogmatism ... the occupational diseases of those who spend their lives directing the intellects of the young. — Henry Seidel Canby

Poems 1959-2009_

I turn into the man they photograph.
I think I'll ask him for his autograph.
He's older than I am and more distinguished.
The beauty of the boy has been extinguished.
He smiles a lot and then not.
Hauteur is the new hot.
He tilts his nose up and looks imperious.
He wants to make sure he looks serious.
He smiles at the photographer but not
The camera. He thinks cold is the look that's hot.
You know the poems. It's an experience.
The way that Shylock is a Shakespearience.
A Jew found frozen on the mountain at the howling summit,
Immortally preserved singing to the dying planet from it. — Frederick Seidel

Flatulency today consists in saying simply in several different ways the same thing over and over again. — Henry Seidel Canby

It was such places as this, such moments that he loved above all else in life; she knew that, and she also knew that he loved them more if she could be there to experience them with him. And although he was aware that the very silences and emptinesses that touched his soul terrified her, he could not bear to be reminded of that. It was as if always he held the fresh hope that she, too, would be touched in the same way as he by solitude and the proximity to infinite things. — Paul Bowles

You need a danger to be safe in. — Frederick Seidel

There must always be a fringe of the experimental in literature
poems bizarre in form and curious in content, stories that overreach for what has not hitherto been put in story form, criticism that mingles a search for new truth with bravado. We should neither scoff at this trial margin nor take it too seriously. Without it, literature becomes inert and complacent. But the everyday person's reading is not, ought not to be, in the margin. He asks for a less experimental diet, and his choice is sound. If authors and publishers would give him more heed they would do wisely. They are afraid of the swarming populace who clamor for vulgar sensation (and will pay only what it is worth), and they are afraid of petulant literati who insist upon sophisticated sensation (and desire complimentary copies). The stout middle class, as in politics and industry, has far less influence than its good sense and its good taste and its ready purse deserve. — Henry Seidel Canby