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"Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use."
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"I like to think of sales as the ability to gracefully persuade, not manipulate, a person or persons into a win-win situation."

"If I drive myself to the brink of my ability, then I don't get stale or bored."

"The size of a fish does not determine its speed."

"Talent can be a nice thing to have sometimes. You look good, attract attention, and if you're lucky, you make some money. Women flock to you. In that sense, having talent's preferable to having none. But talent only functions when it's supported by a tough, unyielding physical and mental focus. All it takes is one screw in your brain to come loose and fall off, or some connection in your body to break down, and your concentration vanishes, like the dew at dawn. If talent's the foundation you rely on, and yet it's so unreliable that you have no idea what's going to happen to it the next minute, what meaning does it have?"

"Talent is its own expectation, Jim: you either live up to it or it waves a hankie, receding forever."
Explore more quotes by Ezra Pound

"Good art however "immoral" is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise."

"Allow me to say that I would long since have committed suicide had desisting made me a professor of Latin."

"The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people."

"And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will."

"Technique is the test of sincerity. If a thing isn't worth getting the technique to say, it is of inferior value."

"If I could believe the Quakers banned music because church music is so damn bad, I should view them with approval."

"Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding."
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