Time & Perspective Quote by John O'Hara

O'Hara pulls off a sly class flex only to swat it away. The Rolls-Royce arrives first like a decoy, a glamorous object that signals success in the only language American culture reliably hears: possession. Then he undercuts the lure with a crisp demotion: he could do without it. The real nonnegotiables are almost comically unglamorous - a typewriter, cheap yellow second sheets, and, most tellingly, time. It is a writer's credo that refuses the myth that art springs from inspiration or status. It comes from materials and hours.

The line works because it’s both self-mythmaking and self-correction. O'Hara doesn’t pretend he’s above luxury; he admits he likes it. But he insists that the engine of his life isn’t the lifestyle reward, it’s the work ritual. "Yellow second sheets" are a pointed detail: not pristine stationery, not display-ready pages, but disposable working paper. Revision is implied. So is volume. He’s telling you he’s a professional, not a dabbler.

Context matters: mid-century America treated the successful novelist as a kind of celebrity, yet still expected him to prove he’d earned the right to be there. O'Hara, often read as a chronicler of status and its humiliations, flips that obsession back on itself. The quote is a reminder that the only durable form of ownership for a writer is control of attention: the time to turn blank pages into sentences.