19 quotes
Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
When a man is still in rebellion against death he has pleasure in taking to himself one of the Godlike attributes; that of giving it.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
A serious writer is not to be confused with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
It is always a mistake to know an author.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
But waiting for a messiah is a long business and you get many fake ones.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
All our words from loose using have lost their edge.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
There is no remedy for anything in life. Death is a sovereign remedy for all misfortunes.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Honor to a Spaniard, no matter how dishonest, is as real a thing as water, wine, or olive oil. There is honor among pickpockets and honor among whores. It is simply that the standards differ.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things and because it takes a man's life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
Decadence is a difficult word to use since it has become little more than a term of abuse applied by critics to anything they do not yet understand or which seems to differ from their moral concepts.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
So far, about morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)
The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.
Death in the Afternoon (1932)