Stanley Elkin famous quotes

04-17-2025

I don't believe less is more. I believe that more is more. I believe that less is less, fat fat, thin thin and enough is enough.
-- Stanley Elkin

#Believe #Less Is More #Enough
Writing is an exercise in sculpture, chipping away at the rock until you find the nose.
-- Stanley Elkin

#Writing #Exercise #Rocks
The furthest out is the only place to be.
-- Stanley Elkin

#Crafts
I would never write about anyone who is not at the end of his rope.
-- Stanley Elkin

#Writing #Rope #Ends
The peculiar dignity of men seen eating alone in restaurants on national holidays
-- Stanley Elkin

#Holiday #Men #Eating Alone
Like a lot of what happens in novels, inspiration is a sort of spontaneous combustion--the oily rags of the head and heart.
-- Stanley Elkin

#Inspiration #Heart #Rags
Like most people of my generation, I fell in love with the philosophy of existentialism. There is no particular religious tradition in my work. There is only one psychological assertion that I would insist upon. That is: the SELF takes precedence.
-- Stanley Elkin

#Religious #Philosophy #Self
But it's hard to talk about art. Maybe there should be a law against it, some First Amendment gag order like crying fire in a crowded theater.
-- Stanley Elkin

#Art #Order #Law
Life's tallest order is to keep the feelings up, to make two dollars' worth of euphoria go the distance. And life can't do that. So fiction does.
-- Stanley Elkin

#Distance #Order #Two
It's fine, precise, detailed work, the infinitely small motor management of diamond cutters and safecrackers that we do in our heads.
-- Stanley Elkin

#Management #Fine #Diamond

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