Malcolm Cowley

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

“Art is the triumph over chaos.”

“The last act is always bloody, no matter how comically it began.”

“They were an uprooted people, and the term 'generation' was both a boast and a complaint.”

“Writers are the custodians of memory, and that’s what this country needs.”

“To be a writer is to be a conspirator.”

“Old age is not a disease, it is a defeat.”

“The body is a vulnerable organism, and it has to be paid for.”

“The function of the critic is to be a good reader—a reader who can assist other readers.”

“A writer's real work is the entire output of his life.”

“One of the dangers of being a scholar is that you develop a liking for boredom.”

“For the first time in history, the idols of the young are not military heroes or statesmen or rocking-chair philosophers, but other young men, and the most cynical of them.”

“Old age is a series of losses.”