Literary Birthday – 21 March – Phyllis McGinley

Phyllis McGinley was born 21 March 1905, and died 22 February 1978.

Phyllis McGinley Quotes

1. Words can sting like anything, but silence breaks the heart.
2. Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy.
3. A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet.
4. Sin has always been an ugly word, but it has been made so in a new sense over the last half-century. It has been made not only ugly but passé. People are no longer sinful, they are only immature or underprivileged or frightened or, more particularly, sick.
5. In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.
6. A bookworm in bed with a new novel and a good reading lamp is as much prepared for pleasure as a pretty girl at a college dance.

Phyllis McGinley was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of children’s books and poetry. According to Wikipedia: ‘Her poetry was in the style of light verse, specializing in humor, satiric tone and the positive aspects of suburban life.’ Aside from her her popular reputation, W.H. Auden praised her imagination and technical skill, her unostentatious rhyming, and likened her writing to that of Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf. She is the author of The Most Wonderful Doll in the World. She received her Pulitzer Prize in 1961 for her book Times Three. Time Magazine put McGinley on its cover on 18 June 1965. McGinley was elected to the National Academy of Arts and Letters in 1955.

Source for image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phyllis_McGinley.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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