After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.
Evelyn WaughRead
Mr. Wodehouse's idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.
Interpretation
Evelyn Waugh praises Wodehouse for creating a timeless literary escape that liberates generations.
In this quote, Evelyn Waugh reflects on the enduring charm and imaginative power of P.G. Wodehouse's writing. Wodehouse's creations provide a delightful escape from the mundane realities of life, offering readers a sanctuary from burdens that may be more challenging than their own times. Waugh suggests that through Wodehouse's idyllic world, readers find solace and joy, enhancing their lives even amidst difficulties.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literature in our lives.
After all, damn it, what does being in love mean if you can't trust a person.
It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.
There are no poetic ideas; only poetic utterances.
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
...she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?
That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.
My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories; he didn't live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not more than, he loved the experiences themselves.
People apparently only read mystery stories of any length. With mysteries, the longer the better, and people will read any damn thing. But the indulgent, 800-page books that were written a hundred years ago are just not going to be written anymore, and people need to get used to that.
In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.
But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they're bad they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they're good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch.
Walter Scott has no business to write novels, especially good ones. It is not fair. He has fame and profit enough as a poet, and should not be taking the bread out of the mouths of other people.
Comerado, this is no book,Who touches this, touches a man,(Is it night? Are we here alone?)It is I you hold, and who holds you,I spring from the pages into your arms-decease calls me forth.
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