Malcolm Cowley Quotes

#1. But you drank your black coffee by choice, believeng that Paris was sufficient alcohol.

Malcolm Cowley

#2. 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

#3. Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.

Malcolm Cowley

#4. 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

#5. 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

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

Malcolm Cowley

#7. 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

#8. The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood.

Malcolm Cowley

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. Age is not different from earlier life as long as you're sitting down.

Malcolm Cowley

#12. Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens.

Malcolm Cowley

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. No complete son of a bitch ever wrote a good sentence.

Malcolm Cowley

#16. It would have been the equivalent of Jackson Pollock's attempts to copy the Sistine Chapel.

Malcolm Cowley