Cyril Connolly
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connollywas a literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizonand wrote Enemies of Promise, which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of fiction that he had aspired to be in his youth...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth10 September 1903
writing dark purple
When I write after dark the shades of evening scatter their purple through my prose.
unique ninety-nine advice
From now on - specialize; never again make any concession to the ninety-nine percent of you which is like everyon else at the expense of the one percent which is unique.
wine sun taught
What grape to keep its place in the sun, taught our ancestors to make wine?
ends avoiding
Only by avoiding the beginning of things can we escape their end.
dream self years
In the dream of approaching forty I saw myself as about to die and realized that I was no longer myself, but a creature inhabited entirely by parasites, as a caterpillar is occupied by the grubs of the ichneumon fly. Gin, whisky, sloth, fear, guilt, tobacco, had made themselves my inquilines; alcohol sloshed about within, while tendrils of melon and vine grew out of ears and nostrils; my mind was a worn gramophone record, my true self was such a ruin as to seem non-existent, and all this had happened in the last three years.
beach art genius
The true work of art is the one which the seventh wave of genius throws up the beach where the undertow of time cannot drag it back.
artist imagination today
Today the function of the artist is to bring imagination to science and science to imagination, where they meet, in the myth.
lying body spirit
Happiness lies in the fulfillment of the spirit through the body.
new-york men economic
That sinister Stonehenge of economic man, Rockefeller Center.
together drink believer
In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together.
beautiful women thinking
Beautiful women must think about their beauty as capitalists think about their investments or politicians about their majorities; it is all they have to insure their places in the world.
civilization forgiven civilized
The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this we are not likely to be forgiven.
writing stories veins
The detective story itself is in a dilemma. It is a vein which is in danger of being worked out, the demand is constant, the powers of supply variable, and the reader, with each one he absorbs, grows a little more sophisticated and harder to please, while the novelist, after each one he writes, becomes a little more exhausted.
emotion reason violent
A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for instinctual drives must be satisfied