Aging & Wisdom Quote by George Murray

"Cr*pshoot" does a lot of work here: it’s blunt, faintly comic, and quietly damning. Murray isn’t just saying the talent pool is uneven. He’s pointing to a literary ecosystem where outcomes feel less like merit and more like dice rolls. For a poet, that phrasing is almost aggressively un-poetic, which is the point. It punctures the romance of the young-genius narrative and replaces it with a shrug from someone who’s watched the machinery up close.

The intent reads as half-warning, half absolution. If you’re an editor, teacher, or prize judge, it’s permission to admit uncertainty without sounding elitist: you’re not failing to spot brilliance; the conditions make spotting it unreliable. If you’re a young writer, it’s a preemptive explanation for why validation can arrive randomly, late, or not at all. The subtext is that the pipeline is noisy: MFA proliferation, online platforms, algorithmic attention, shrinking review real estate, and a market that rewards “voice” as brand. When everything is publishable somewhere, discernment starts to look like gambling.

That “right now” matters. It suggests a historical shift rather than eternal gatekeeper grumpiness. Murray implies a moment where craft, mentorship, and slow development are harder to measure against speed, hustle, and social proof. The line lands because it’s both compassionate and unsentimental: it acknowledges young writers aren’t uniquely doomed or uniquely gifted; they’re trying to come up in a cultural casino where the house isn’t even sure what game it’s dealing.