"I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze"
About this Quote
Lawrence treats spite not as a moral failing but as a pressure system: something the body and mind build up until it has to erupt. Pairing “spiteful” with “a good sneeze” is classic Lawrencean provocation, a refusal to let writing float off into tasteful “inspiration.” He’s insisting on the ugly fuel behind art - the petty irritation, the social friction, the bruised ego - and daring you to admit how productive it can be.
The intent is partly self-exoneration. If spite is a sneeze, then the act isn’t cruelty so much as hygiene: the writer clears his head, unblocks his system, returns to equilibrium. That metaphor smuggles in a defense of polemic. Lawrence wrote in an England thick with propriety, industrial discipline, and moral gatekeeping; his work repeatedly collided with censorship and polite scandal. In that context, “spite” can read less like random malice and more like resistance to suffocation: a recoil from being told what bodies, marriages, class roles, and desires are allowed to look like on the page.
The subtext is also a warning about craft. A sneeze is involuntary, brief, intensely satisfying - and not necessarily elegant. Lawrence signals that some of his sharpest sentences come from being irritated enough to stop negotiating with the reader. Spite strips away politeness; it gives him permission to be blunt, to puncture cant, to say the rude true thing. It’s a portrait of writing as release, not refinement - and of the author as someone who sometimes needs antagonism to breathe.
The intent is partly self-exoneration. If spite is a sneeze, then the act isn’t cruelty so much as hygiene: the writer clears his head, unblocks his system, returns to equilibrium. That metaphor smuggles in a defense of polemic. Lawrence wrote in an England thick with propriety, industrial discipline, and moral gatekeeping; his work repeatedly collided with censorship and polite scandal. In that context, “spite” can read less like random malice and more like resistance to suffocation: a recoil from being told what bodies, marriages, class roles, and desires are allowed to look like on the page.
The subtext is also a warning about craft. A sneeze is involuntary, brief, intensely satisfying - and not necessarily elegant. Lawrence signals that some of his sharpest sentences come from being irritated enough to stop negotiating with the reader. Spite strips away politeness; it gives him permission to be blunt, to puncture cant, to say the rude true thing. It’s a portrait of writing as release, not refinement - and of the author as someone who sometimes needs antagonism to breathe.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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