Paul West Quotes

7 Sourced Quotes

Some creative heads, in order to see the world at all, and to find it worth representing, need to begin by putting it in gaudy colors.

Paul West
Certain producers of plain prose have conned the reading public into believing that only in prose plain, humdrum, or flat can you articulate the mind of inarticulate ordinary Joe. Even to begin to do that you need to be more articulate than Joe, or you might as well tape-record him and leave it at that.

Paul West
It takes a certain amount of sass to speak up for prose that's rich, succulent and full of novelty. Purple is immoral, undemocratic and insincere; at best artsy, at worst the exterminating angel of depravity.

Paul West
Humanism, it seems, is almost impossible in America where material progress is part of the national romance whereas in Europe such progress is relished because it feels nice.

Paul West
Of course the writer cannot always burn with a hard gemlike flame or a white heat, but it should be possible to be a chubby hot-water bottle, rendering maximum attentiveness in the most enterprising sentences.

Paul West
I early on came to appreciate words as what I now realize are repositories of human history Mr. They were magical things to me, a bit like supercritical helium held with your bare hands.

Paul West
The impulse here is to make everything larger than life, almost to overrespond, maybe because, habituated to life written down, in both senses, we become inured and have to be awakened with something almost intolerably vivid. When the deep purple blooms, you are looking at a dimension, not a posy.

Paul West