William Maxwell
William Maxwell
William Keepers Maxwell, Jr.was an American editor, novelist, short story writer, essayist, children's author, and memoirist. He served as a fiction editor at The New Yorker from 1936 to 1975. An editor devoted to his writers, Maxwell became a legendary mentor and confidant to many of the most prominent authors of his day. Although best known as an editor, Maxwell was a highly respected and award winning novelist and short story writer. His stature as a celebrated author has grown...
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth16 August 1908
people choices strange
The reason life is so strange is that so often people have no choice,
lying past talking
In talking about the past, we lie with every breath we draw.
men house gentleman
A gentleman doesn't have one set of manners for the house of a poor man and another for the house of someone with an income incomparable to his own.
humility people serious
People often ask themselves the right questions. Where they fail is in answering the questions they ask themselves, and even there they do not fail by much...But it takes time, it takes humility and a serious reason for searching.
his-love violet lace
Satin and lace and brown velvet and the faint odor of violets. That was all which was left to him of his love.
emulation reader moved
A writer is a reader who is moved to emulation.
literature reader
Your reader is at least as bright as you are
nails circumstances magnet
The nail doesn't choose the time or the circumstances in which it is drawn to the magnet
spring lying home
Sometimes she goes out to work as a practical nurse, and comes home and sits by the kitchen table soaking her feet in a pan of hot water and Epsom salts. When she gets into bed and the springs creak under her weight, she groans with the pleasure of lying stretched out on an object that understands her so well.
memories lying past
What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.
book reading doors
Reading is rapture (or if it isn't, I put the book down meaning to go on with it later, and escape out the side door).
memories mind goes-on
What we refer to confidently as memory is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling.
doors gone get-back
I had inadvertently walked through a door that I shouldn’t have gone through and couldn’t get back to the place I hadn’t meant to leave.
dog hunting imagination
If you turn the imagination loose like a hunting dog, it will often return with the bird in its mouth.