Stanley Elkin Quotes

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Plot is to literature what individual holes are to miniature golf.

Stanley Elkin

My editor at Random House, Joe Fox, used to tell me, "Stanley, less is more." [...] I had to fight him tooth and nail in the better restaurants to maintain excess because I don't believe that less is more. I believe that more is more. I believe that less is less, fat fat, thin thin and enough is enough.

Stanley Elkin

The fact that we die is one of the more interesting things that happen to us. Fiction ought to be about bottom lines, and that's as bottom-line as you can get.

Stanley Elkin

Like most people of my generation, I fell in love with the philosophy of existentialism. There is no particular religious tradition in my work. There is only one psychological assertion that I would insist upon. That is: the SELF takes precedence.

Stanley Elkin

[Writing is] a kind of whittling, a kind of honing to the bone, until you finally get whatever the hell it is you're looking for. It's an exercise in sculpture, chipping away at the rock until you find the nose.

Stanley Elkin

Life is shapeless, but art, as everybody knows, is shaped.

Stanley Elkin

Something about him suggested the ruthless isolation, the hard self-sufficiency of the orphaned, the peculiar dignity of men seen eating alone in restaurants on national holidays.

Stanley Elkin

Stanley Elkin

Born: May 11, 1930

Died: May 31, 1995 (aged 65)

Bio: Stanley Lawrence Elkin was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. His extravagant, satirical fiction revolves around American consumerism, popular culture, and male-female relationships.

Known for:

The Dick Gibson show (1971)
The living end (1979)
The franchiser (1976)
The magic kingdom (1985)
Criers & kibitzers, kibitzers & criers (1965)

Stanley Elkin on Wikipedia

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