Sloan Wilson Quotes

You don't really know much until you get to be 70.

I could get a job in an advertising agency. I'll write copy telling people to eat more cornflakes and smoke more and more cigarettes and buy more refrigerators and automobiles, until they explode with happiness.

Only masochists can get along without editing their own memories.

Believe me, I want you to have a good time,' he said gently, 'but people who have that primarily in mind rarely accomplish it.

It doesn't really matter. Here goes nothing. It will be interesting to see what happens.

When you have children, you can't say you're not interested in money.

The only real reason to write professionally is that you love it enough.

The American middle class always wants to be upper class and is scared to death of being lower class. It's a highly mobile group of people. They're not like the people that want to be shopkeepers forever, have always been shopkeepers and want always to be shopkeepers. These people mostly are insulted by being called middle class.

A man who wants time to read and write must let the grass grow long.

You're not going to go far unless you're a workaholic.

I really don't know what I was looking for when I got back from the war, but it seemed as though all I could see was a lot of bright young men in gray flannel suits rushing around New York in a frantic parade to nowhere. They seemed to me to be pursuing neither ideals nor happiness – they were pursuing a routine. For a long while I thought I was on the sidelines watching that parade, and it was quite a shock to glance down and see that I too was wearing a gray flannel suit.

Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders.

The world's treated me awfully well, and I guess it's crept into my work.