Angus Wilson was born 11 August 1913, and died 31 May 1991.
Nine Quotes
- Life isn’t just to be found, you have to work for it.
- Fiction writing is a kind of magic. If I communicate the magic spell . . . it loses its force for me.
- The opportunities for heroism are limited in this kind of world: the most people can do is sometimes not to be as weak as they’ve been at other times.
- Life can’t be put on paper in all its complexity.
- Envy has the ugliness of a trapped rat that has gnawed its own foot in its effort to escape.
- The novelist must be his own most harsh critic and also his own most loving admirer and about both he must say nothing.
- The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life.
- All fiction for me is a kind of magic and trickery, a confidence trick, trying to make people believe something is true that isn’t.
- The roots of art and play lie very close together.
Sir Angus Frank Johnstone-Wilson, known as Angus Wilson, was an English novelist and short story writer. He won the 1958 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for The Middle Age of Mrs Eliot. He received a knighthood for his services to literature.
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