[A] hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven 'sure fire' literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.
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William Faulkner, "Books and Things: American Drama: Inhibitions", in The Missippian, March 1922Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)
» Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) - all quotes »
The qualities of a second-rate writer can easily be defined, but a first-rate writer can only be experienced. It is just the thing in him which escapes analysis that makes him first-rate.
Willa Cather
The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers.
Barbara Walters
I feel and know that the Repeal [of the Act of Union 1801] must lead to the dismemberment of this great empire; must make Great Britain a fourth-rate power in Europe, and Ireland a savage wilderness.
Robert Peel
I knew I'd never be more than a second-rate business man and a second-rate writer — so I decided to add the two things together and be a first rate advertising man.
Bruce Fairchild Barton
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne (Mark Twain)
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