25+ Harry Crews Quotes On Education, World And Grits

Harry Crews was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist from Bacon County, Georgia. He was known for his vivid, often darkly comic portrayals of the Southern United States. His best-known works include the novels A Feast of Snakes and The Gospel Singer. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Harry Crews on education, life, leadership.

Top 10 Harry Crews Quotes

1. 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.
2. Survival is triumph enough.
3. Men to whom God is dead worship one another.
4. That was the only decision there was once upon a time: what to do with the night.
5. 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.
6. Teaching, real teaching, is - or ought to be - a messy business.
7. The writer's job is to get naked.
8. He did not know what love was. And he did not know what good it was. But he knew he carried it around with him, a scabrous spot of rot, of contagion, for which there was no cure.
9. What the artist owes the world is his work; not a model for living.
10. The artist lives in an atmosphere of perpetual failure.

Harry Crews Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

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

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

Writing a book is like torture that you don't know, but after it's done and there it is. It's a joy like unlike anything else, I think it's the closest that a man can come to knowing what is feels like to have a baby. — Harry Crews

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I believe some people are just too damn smart to write fiction. — Harry Crews

Life Lessons by Harry Crews

1. Harry Crews teaches us that life is full of struggles, but that we can find strength and resilience within ourselves to overcome them.
2. He emphasizes the importance of having a strong moral compass and standing up for what is right, even when it is difficult.
3. He also highlights the power of storytelling to help us make sense of our lives and connect with others.