Quotes by Trilling, Lionel

The immature artist imitates. The mature artist steals. >>

We are at heart so profoundly anarchistic that the only form of state >>

Educating a son I should allow him no fairy tales and only a very few >>

Quotations about Fiction

Novels are longer than life. >>

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not >>

What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence stro >>

Educating a son I should allow him no fairy tales and only a very few novels. This is to prevent him from having 1. the sense of romantic solitude (if he is worth anything he will develop a proper and useful solitude) which identification with the hero gives. 2. cant ideas of right and wrong, absurd systems of honor and morality which never will he be able completely to get rid of, 3. the attainment of ideals, of a priori desires, of a priori emotions. He should amuse himself with fact only: he will then not learn that if the weak younger son do or do not the magical honorable thing he will win the princess with hair like flax.

Trilling, Lionel