Top 18 Quotes & Sayings by Stanley Elkin

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American novelist Stanley Elkin.

Last updated on November 5, 2024.

Stanley Lawrence Elkin was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. His extravagant, satirical fiction revolves around American consumerism, popular culture, and male–female relationships.

American - Novelist | May 11, 1930 - May 31, 1995

Source: Wikipedia

Plot is to literature what individual holes are to miniature golf.

Stanley Elkin

I look eight years older than everybody.

Stanley Elkin

The fact that we die is one of the more interesting things that happen to us. Fiction ought to be about bottom lines, and that's as bottom-line as you can get.

Stanley Elkin

When I was growing up, we had a bungalow in New Jersey which we visited in the summers. Everybody in that small community was named Feldman and was either an aunt or cousin of mine. I just found it comfortable to use the name Feldman.

Stanley Elkin

I've always been terrified of dying, always. It was a concern of mine long before it had to be.

Stanley Elkin

Like most people of my generation, I fell in love with the philosophy of existentialism.

Stanley Elkin

I don't read much nonfiction because the nonfiction I do read always seems to be so badly written. What I enjoy about fiction - the great gift of fiction - is that it gives language an opportunity to happen.

Stanley Elkin

What a writer's message is is totally unimportant. Either he is agreeing with life by affirming, or he is saying life is just a bowl of wormwood.

Stanley Elkin

I would never write about anyone who is not at the end of his rope.

Stanley Elkin

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

Writing is an exercise in sculpture, chipping away at the rock until you find the nose.

Stanley Elkin

It's fine, precise, detailed work, the infinitely small motor management of diamond cutters and safecrackers that we do in our heads.

Stanley Elkin

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

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

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

The peculiar dignity of men seen eating alone in restaurants on national holidays

Stanley Elkin

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

The furthest out is the only place to be.

Stanley Elkin

Top 18 Quotes & Sayings by Stanley Elkin

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