Evelyn Waugh Quotes

Quotes by and about Evelyn Waugh

(Continued from his main entry on the site.)

[Asked how he writes his novels:]
Waugh: "I put the words down and push them a bit."

Wall Street Journal: "Waugh ... never cared to explain his own art."

The Spectator: "Waugh hesitated to commit himself to a career as a professional novelist because he ... had a terror of running out of material, knowing that he required experiences in his own life to detonate or insinuate plots."

Gore Vidal: "His characters are taken from life, sometimes still struggling as he pins them to the page. He makes no new worlds. He simply turns this one inside out."

Gore Vidal: "He tends to look to the past for what was good rather than to the future for what might be. He is a reactionary."

New York Times: "He was committed ... to tradition."