30 Quotes by Malcolm Cowley

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.