All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.
Cyril ConnollyRead
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism what will be grasped at once.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Literature aims to engage readers deeply, while journalism focuses on immediate understanding.
This quote by Cyril Connolly highlights the difference between literature and journalism. Literature is created as an art form that encourages readers to reflect and revisit the text, often uncovering deeper meanings on subsequent readings. In contrast, journalism is geared towards delivering information quickly to the audience, who seek to grasp the content immediately, often providing straightforward facts without the layered nuances found in literary works.
Themes
LiteratureJournalismWritingArtReading
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used at a writing workshop to illustrate the differences between different forms of writing.
More from Cyril Connolly
All quotes →When I contemplate the accumulation of guilt and remorse which, like a garbage-can, I carry through life, and which is fed not only by the lightest action but by the most harmless pleasure, I feel Man to be of all living things the most biologically incompetent and ill-organized. Why has he acquired a seventy years life-span only to poison it incurably by the mere being of himself? Why has he thrown Conscience, like a dead rat, to putrefy in the well?
Cyril ConnollyRead
A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.
Cyril ConnollyRead
The artist is a member of the leisured classes who cannot pay for his leisure.
Cyril ConnollyRead
We are all serving a life sentence in the dungeon of the self.
Cyril ConnollyRead
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin man is wildly signaling to be let out.
Cyril ConnollyRead
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