Literary Birthday – 11 August – Angus Wilson

Angus Wilson was born 11 August 1913, and died 31 May 1991.

Nine Quotes

1. Life isn’t just to be found, you have to work for it.
2. Fiction writing is a kind of magic. If I communicate the magic spell . . . it loses its force for me.
3. 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.
4. Life can’t be put on paper in all its complexity.
5. Envy has the ugliness of a trapped rat that has gnawed its own foot in its effort to escape.
6. The novelist must be his own most harsh critic and also his own most loving admirer and about both he must say nothing.
7. The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life.
8. 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.
9. 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.

by Amanda Patterson

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