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How certain human beings are able to create works of art is a mystery, and why they should wish to do so, at a great cost to themselves usually, is another mystery. Works are not created by one's life; every life is rich in material.

— Elizabeth Hardwick American Fictions (1999)

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More quotes by Elizabeth Hardwick

Sex, without society as its landscape, has never been of much interest to fiction.

American Fictions (1999)

She never liked the constant presence of her husbands or lovers and did not like, she soon found out, to be alone — a dilemma in one shape or another common to most of mankind.

American Fictions (1999)

Writing is not "the establishment of a professional reputation" as if one were a doctor or lawyer; it is not properly in the sentence with creation of a family and the purchase of a home.

American Fictions (1999)

The private and serious drama of guilt is not often a useful one for fiction today and its disappearance, following perhaps the disappearance from life, appears as a natural, almost unnoticed relief, like some of the challenging illnesses wiped out by drug and vaccines.

American Fictions (1999)

Gertrude Stein, all courage and will, is a soldier of minimalism. Her work, unlike the resonating silences in the art of Samuel Beckett, embodies in its loquacity and verbosity the curious paradox of the minimalist form. This art of the nuance in repetition and placement she shares with the orchestral compositions of Philip Glass.

American Fictions (1999)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Elizabeth Hardwick (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.