They were learning that New York had another life, too — subterranean, like almost everything that was human in the city — a life of writers meeting in restaurants at lunchtime or in coffee houses after business hours to talk of work just started or magazines unpublished, and even to lay modest plans for the future. Modestly they were beginning to write poems worth the trouble of reading to their friends over coffee cups. Modestly they were rebelling once more.

~ Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley Coffee Conversation Future Plans Lost Generation Modest New York Poetry Rebellion Writers

Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.

~ Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley Book Considerate Inspirational Kind

The late 1920s were an age of islands, real and metaphorical. They were an age when Americans by thousands and tens of thousands were scheming to take the next boat for the South Seas or the West Indies, or better still for Paris, from which they could scatter to Majorca, Corsica, Capri or the isles of Greece. Paris itself was a modern city that seemed islanded in the past, and there were island countries, like Mexico, where Americans could feel that they had escaped from everything that oppressed them in a business civilization. Or without leaving home they could build themselves private islands of art or philosophy; or else - and this was a frequent solution - they could create social islands in the shadow of the skyscrapers, groups of close friends among whom they could live as unconstrainedly as in a Polynesian valley, live without moral scruples or modern conveniences, live in the pure moment, live gaily on gin and love and two lamb chops broiled over a coal fire in the grate. That was part of the Greenwich Village idea, and soon it was being copied in Boston, San Francisco, everywhere.

~ Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley 1920S Americans Art Boats Civilization Escape Greece Greenwich Village Idealism Islands Isles Lost Generation Love Mexico Oppressive Paris Philosophy Pure San Francisco Scruples Social Life

It is the fear of being as dependent as a young child while not being loved as a child is loved but merely being kept alive against one's will.

~ Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley Aging Old Age

They tell you that you'll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don't tell you is that you won't miss it very much.

~ Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley Aging Old Age

...but you drank your black coffee by choice, believeng that Paris was sufficient alcohol.

~ Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley Paris