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meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started or magazines unpublished, and even to lay modest plans for the future.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.”

“No complete son of a bitch ever wrote a good sentence.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.”

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

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

“Age is not different from earlier life as long as you're sitting down.”