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Citations de C. S. Forester

Citations de C.S. Forester

http://www.cap-horn.be/cs_forester_citations.php | 06-12-2024 11:46 | © 1999- N. Grigorellis

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A man who writes for a living does not have to go anywhere in particular, and he could rarely afford to if he wanted.

A whim, a passing mood, readily induces the novelist to move hearth and home elsewhere. He can always plead work as an excuse to get him out of the clutches of bothersome hosts.

Any offens, from cutting football practice to acting in a sidey manner, called for a form of punishment.

Everything was in stark and dreadful contrast with the trivial crises and counterfeit emotions of Hollywood, and I returned to England deeply moved and emotionally worn out.

I formed a resolution to never write a word I did not want to write; to think only of my own tastes and ideals, without a thought of those of editors or publishers.

I had written the last words of the long story while the white ensign told the last of Hitler's allies how long was th arm of sea power.

I have had a remarkably happy life-I doubt if anyone could have had a happier during the 20th century.

I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this.

I met a man who was in the German Infantry of the Marine and who was wounded when the Vindictive came to Ostend.

I met men who had fought in battlecruises, and others who had commanded Turkish warships.

I must be like the princess who felt the pea through seven mattresses; each book is a pea.

I think I have groaned over Hornblower; I have published verses laughing at him, but he does not recognize a rebuff when he meets one.

I tried to live the life of a man about town on the allowance of a medical student.

I used to believe in those days that if ever I had been deemed liable to punishment I would never have endured it.

It was winter-time, and I was hard up. A bright idea struck me. Why not write that novel and bring in some much wanted cash?

Novel writing is far and away the most exhausting work I know.

Novel writing wrecks homes.

Perhaps that suspicion of fraud enhances the flavor.

Steadily my pen filed the sheet and those long-thought-out words came nearer and nearer.

The army medical examination, I had always understood, was sketchy... I expected the whole business to be over in five minutes.

The doctor who applied a stethoscope to my heart was not satisfied. I was told to get my papers with the clerk in the outer hall. I was medically rejected.

The fools ran after me and I ran after the whores, foolish though I realized such a proceeding to be.

The material came bubbling up inside like a geyser or an oil gusher. It streamed up of its own accord, down my arm and out of my fountain pen in a torrent of six thousand words a day.

The most degrading sensation on earth-worse even than the discovery of lice in one's clothes-is the feeling of icy, filty water leaking in and out of one's shoes at every step.

The time will come when I am an old man, a nuisance to my children and a burden upon my wife, maundering in senility towards a grave which I alone will not regard as a merciful release.

The work is with me when I wake up in the morning; it is with me while I eat my breakfast in bed and run through the newspaper, while I shave and bathe and dress.

There have been times when I have stood on the bridge of a battleship, when royalty has actually shaken me by the hand.

There is an acute, if oddly flavored, please in looking round at Naples or Suva and telling myself that I would not be doing so if I had not learned how to make marks on paper.

There is no other way of writing a novel than to begin at the beginning at to continue to the end.

There is only one joy to compare with the well-timed straight left, and that is the mad perverse pleasure of standing up to a better boxer and taking his punches and struggling on despite pain and weakness to the very end.

There is still need to think and plan, but on a different scale, and along different lines.

They managed to find time... to tell me that there was no chance of my being accepted for service and that really I should be surprised to still be alive.

When I die there may be a paragraph or two in the newspapers. My name will linger in the British Museum Reading Room catalogue for a space at the head of a long list of books for which no one will ever ask.

With two people and luggage on board she draws four inches of water. Two canoe paddles will move her along at a speed reasonable enough in moderate currents.


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