Stephen Vizinczey, originally István Vizinczey, (b.1933) is an author and writer. Vizinczey’s first published works were poems which appeared in George Lukacs’s Budapest magazine Forum in 1949, when the writer was 16. He studied under Lukacs at the University of Budapest and graduated from the city’s Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in 1956. He wrote at that time two plays, The Last Word and Mama, which were banned by the Hungarian Communist regime. He took part in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and after a short stay in Italy, ended up in Canada speaking only 50 words of English, and eventually taking Canadian citizenship. He learned English writing scripts for Canada’s National Film Board and the CBC. He edited Canada’s short-lived literary magazine, Exchange. In 1966 he moved to London.
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Like all wage slaves, he had two crosses to bear: the people he worked for and the people he worked with.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Money
Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Writers, Writing, Authors & Writing
Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parent’s birth.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Power
We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Society
The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person’s name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Virtue
Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Imagination
Consistency is a virtue for trains: what we want from a philosopher is insights, whether he comes by them consistently or not.
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: Consistency
Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the center of man’s universe is the earth?
—Stephen Vizinczey
Topics: World
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