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
past views curiosity
The view after seventy is breathtaking. What is lacking is someone, anyone, of the older generation to whom you can turn when you want to satisfy your curiosity about some detail of the landscape of the past. There is no longer any older generation. You have become it, while your mind was mostly on other matters
sadness patient kind
His sadness was of the kind that is patient and without hope.
sunset dark light
Happiness is the light on the water. The water is cold and dark and deep.
soul cameras lenses
Love, even of the most ardent and soul-destroying kind, is never caught by the lens of the camera.
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.
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.
emulation reader moved
A writer is a reader who is moved to emulation.
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.
sensitive considering knows
Who knows what oversensitive is, considering all there is to be sensitive to.
literature reader
Your reader is at least as bright as you are
father understanding authority
My father represented authority, which meant—to me—that he could not also represent understanding.
cat walks
I am the cat that walks alone.
lying past talking
In talking about the past, we lie with every breath we draw.