Literary Composition Quotes by Gilbert Sorrentino

All I do know, for certain, after 53 years in this business, is that writers who sincerely think that their language can represent reality…

— Gilbert Sorrentino

“A writer discovers what he knows as he knows it, i.e., as he makes it. No artist writes in order to objectify an “idea”…

— Gilbert Sorrentino

“Only death can cure the hip dilettante.”

— Gilbert Sorrentino

On Being Blue celebrates both language and that which it represents and carefully draws our attention to that difficult middle ground on which the…

— Gilbert Sorrentino

“He may have liked many other things, but we know for certain only that he liked a sweet summer breeze, stars shining softly above,…

— Gilbert Sorrentino

“Q: What literary complexities do you find most interesting? That is, what do you like most to "solve," so to speak, as a novelist?…

— Gilbert Sorrentino

“He hadn't "abused" alcohol, but had spent almost four years sitting in a chair drinking jug wine around the clock and looking, variously, at…

— Gilbert Sorrentino

…and to all you other cats and chicks out there, sweet or otherwise, buried deep in wordy tombs, who never yet have walked from…

— Gilbert Sorrentino

It is no wonder lesbians love women.

— Gilbert Sorrentino

What is this thing called a kiss? French, tongue, soul, chaste, motherly, fatherly, brotherly, sisterly, ass, genital, Judas, trembling, rough, hesitant, sweet, soft, wet,…

— Gilbert Sorrentino

“One must find some structure, even if it be this haphazard one of the alphabet.”

— Gilbert Sorrentino

“He wiped her forehead and stroked her shoulders, worshiping her pain. He went to get a Coke and brought it back to her, but…

— Gilbert Sorrentino

They want politics and think it will save them. At best, it gives direction to their numbed desires. But there is no politics but…

— Gilbert Sorrentino

“There is no sincere stupidity that doesn't create, eventually, its own rationale, conduct, operating procedures, its own critical formulae whereby it may be, in…

— Gilbert Sorrentino

“I like to synthesize; I hate analysis. I don’t like to take a subject and break it down into parts; I like to take…

— Gilbert Sorrentino