Art & Creativity Quote by H. L. Mencken

Mencken doesn’t romanticize writing; he barnyards it. By comparing his prose to a cow giving milk, he punctures the pious idea that authors write to “express themselves” or to uplift the nation. The image is deliberately unglamorous, even faintly obscene in its frankness. That’s the gag and the argument: writing, for him, is less a sacred calling than a bodily necessity, a pressure that demands release.

The line works because it’s a double insult aimed in two directions. First, at the writer-as-priest pose: Mencken frames the act as mechanical “function achieved,” swapping inspiration for physiology. Second, at the culture that treats literature as moral decoration: he implies the only honest pleasure is the after-the-fact relief, not the performance of virtue. The cow metaphor also smuggles in Mencken’s characteristic contempt for pretension. Milk is useful, yes, but it’s also just a product; don’t confuse the producer with a prophet.

Context matters. Mencken made his career as an anti-sentimental critic of American boosterism, Victorian prudery, and what he saw as the mushy uplift industry surrounding art, politics, and religion. In that milieu, to describe writing as a kind of excretion is a tactical offense. He’s clearing space for a harder, more bracing view: the writer’s job is to produce, to discharge, to get it right - and then, finally, to feel the blessed quiet that comes when the sentence stops resisting.