Wilfrid John Joseph Sheed (born December 27 1930 – 19 January 2011 ) is an English-born American novelist and essayist.
The rational man may talk a good game about suicide, but reason must give way to obsession and finally squalor before he can actually do it.
In modern American style, his job, not his past, defined him.
That is the best story he could find in his life, never mind if it's the truest: an artist's duty is always to tell the best story.
The 1930s — a Golden Age for American humor, mainly because everything else was going so badly. The wisecrack was the basic American sentence because there were so many things that could not be said any other way.
Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy — but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are palaces of misery.