Harry Crews Quotes

• I never wanted to be well-rounded. I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design.

  Harry Crews

  Work, Creativity, Cutting

  42 Copy quote

• There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.

  Harry Crews

  Broken Heart, Beautiful, Hurt

  Harry Crews (1993). “Scar Lover”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

  63 Copy quote

• The truth of the matter was stories was everything and everything was stories. Everybody told stories. It was a way of saying who they were in the world. It was their understanding of themselves. It was letting themselves know how they believed the world worked, the right way and the way that was not so right.

  Harry Crews

  Understanding, Stories, World

  22 Copy quote

• The writers job is to get naked, To hide nothing. To look away from nothing. To look at it. To not blink. To be not embarrassed or shamed of it. Strip it down and lets get down to where the blood is, the bone is. Instead of hiding it with clothes and all kinds of other stuff, luxury!

  Harry Crews

  Jobs, Blood, Luxury

  30 Copy quote

• Writers spend all their time preoccupied with just the things that their fellow men and women spend their time trying to avoid thinking about. ... It takes great courage to look where you have to look, which is in yourself, in your experience, in your relationship with fellow beings, your relationship to the earth, to the spirit or to the first cause—to look at them and make something of them.

  Harry Crews

  Writing, Men, Thinking

  30 Copy quote

• If you wait until you got time to write a novel, or time to write a story, or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read - if you wait for the time, you will never do it. ‘Cause there ain’t no time; world don’t want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week.

  Harry Crews

  Zoos, Book, Writing

  22 Copy quote

• What the artist owes the world is his work; not a model for living.

  Harry Crews

  Artist, World, Models

  22 Copy quote

• I think all of us are looking for that which does not admit of bullshit . . . If you tell me you can bench press 450, hell, we'll load up the bar and put you under it. Either you can do it or you can't do it-you can't bullshit. Ultimately, sports are just about as close to what one would call the truth as it is possible to get in this world.

  Harry Crews

  Sports, Thinking, Bullshit

  22 Copy quote

• Alcohol whipped me. Alcohol and I had many, many marvelous times together. We laughed, we talked, we danced at the party together; then one day I woke up and the band had gone home and I was lying in the broken glass with a shirt full of puke and I said, 'Hey, man, the ball game's up'.

  Harry Crews

  Lying, Party, Home

  25 Copy quote

• There ought to be a law against the sun rising and setting for you in somebody else.

  Harry Crews

  Law, Sun, Rising

  Harry Crews (1989). “The knockout artist”, Harpercollins

  19 Copy quote

• Survival is triumph enough.

  Harry Crews

  Survival, Triumph, Enough

  Harry Crews (1993). “Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

  16 Copy quote

• If you're gonna write, for God in heaven's sake, try to get naked. Try to write the truth. Try to get underneath all the sham, all the excuses, all the lies that you've been told.

  Harry Crews

  Lying, Writing, Heaven

  22 Copy quote

• The artist lives in an atmosphere of perpetual failure.

  Harry Crews

  Inspirational, Creativity, Artist

  19 Copy quote

• Hell came right along with God, hand in hand. The stink of sulfur swirled in the air of the church, fire burned in the aisles, and brimstone rained out of the rafters. From the evangelist's oven mouth spewed images of a place with pitchforks, and devils, and lakes of fire that burned forever. God had fixed a place like that because he loved us so much.

  Harry Crews

  Fire, Lakes, Air

  Harry Crews (1993). “Classic Crews: A Harry Crews Reader”, p.167, Simon and Schuster

  17 Copy quote

• I first became fascinated with the Sears catalogue because all the people in its pages were perfect. Nearly everybody I knew had something missing, a finger cut off, a toe split, an ear half-chewed away, an eye clouded with blindness from a glancing fence staple. And if they didn't have something missing, they were carrying scars from barbed wire, or knives, or fishhooks. But the people in the catalogue had no such hurts. They were not only whole, had all their arms and legs and eyes on their unscarred bodies, but they were also beautiful.

  Harry Crews

  Beautiful, Hurt, Eye

  Harry Crews (1995). “A Childhood: The Biography of a Place”, p.58, University of Georgia Press

  10 Copy quote

• That was the only decision there was once upon a time: what to do with the night.

  Harry Crews

  Night, Decision, Once Upon A Time

  Harry Crews (1998). “A Feast of Snakes: A Novel”, p.27, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

• Speaks well of a man to need a little something in this world. I wouldn't trust a man who could git through it cold sober.

  Harry Crews

  Men, Needs, World

  Harry Crews (1979). “Blood and Grits”, HarperCollins Publishers

  14 Copy quote

• The writer's job is to get naked.

  Harry Crews

  Jobs, Naked

  20 Copy quote

• Men to whom God is dead worship one another.

  Harry Crews

  Men, Worship, God Is Dead

  16 Copy quote

• I believe some people are just too damn smart to write fiction.

  Harry Crews

  Smart, Believe, Writing

  16 Copy quote

• We want to be famous as a writer, as a poet, as a painter, as a politician, as a singer, or what you will. Why? Becauwse we really don't lov what we are doing. If you loved to sing, or to paint, or to write poems - if you really loved it - you would not be concerned with whether you are famous or not. ... Our present education is rotten because it teaches us to love Nothing is allowed to die in a society of storytelling people.

  Harry Crews

  Writing, People, Rotten

  12 Copy quote

• Teaching, real teaching, is - or ought to be - a messy business.

  Harry Crews

  Real, Teaching, Messy

  10 Copy quote

• God love the car. It has shown the naked heart that lives in all of us. Man invented the car but the car -- out of pure malevolence no doubt -- changed the history of the world by reinventing man.

  Harry Crews

  Heart, Men, Car

  8 Copy quote

• I've never enjoyed myself. I'm incapable of enjoying myself. There's just some people who don't enjoy themselves very much.

  Harry Crews

  People, Enjoy, Incapable

  4 Copy quote

• I am not perfect." It came out in a rush of breath. "See I thought I was. Thank God I ain't. See a perfect thing ain't got a chance. The world kills it, everything perfect. (Listen to him!) Now see a thing that ain't perfect, it grows like a weed. Yeah, like a weed! A thing that ain't perfect gets hand clapping, smiles, takes the wire an easy winner. But the world ain't set up right if you perfect. You lible to run right into a brick wall. Looks like suicide. All the weeds say, looka there, it suicide!

  Harry Crews

  Suicide, Running, Weed

  8 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Barry Hannah

Flannery O'Connor

Charles Bukowski

Raymond Carver

Lydia Lunch

Donald Ray Pollock

Padgett Powell

Cormac McCarthy