"The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets"
About this Quote
Morley’s line is less about transportation than temperament: the bicycle as a manifesto for how writers should move through the world. The insistence of “surely” gives it a gently bossy charm, like a friend pressing a book into your hands because it will improve your life. Underneath is a rebuke to the sealed-off modern self. Cars (even in Morley’s era) turn travel into enclosure and speed; the bicycle keeps the body exposed to weather, street noise, chance encounters, and the small embarrassments of effort. That’s exactly the raw material a novelist or poet lives on.
The bicycle also flatters the writer’s preferred pace. It’s faster than walking but slow enough for noticing, a rhythm that matches composition: steady propulsion, brief coasting, sudden swerves when an image or idea appears. Morley is implying that good sentences aren’t produced by brute acceleration but by calibrated attention. You don’t “arrive” so much as accumulate impressions.
Context matters. Writing in the early 20th century, Morley watched mechanization promise frictionless living while quietly shrinking experience into convenience. His bicycle is a democratic counter-symbol: inexpensive, self-powered, intimate with the neighborhood. It turns the writer into a participant rather than a spectator, someone who earns the view.
Calling it “the vehicle of novelists and poets” is also an identity play: the artist as lightly equipped, mobile, receptive. The subtext is almost moral. If you want to write about life, don’t insulate yourself from it. Pedal into it.
The bicycle also flatters the writer’s preferred pace. It’s faster than walking but slow enough for noticing, a rhythm that matches composition: steady propulsion, brief coasting, sudden swerves when an image or idea appears. Morley is implying that good sentences aren’t produced by brute acceleration but by calibrated attention. You don’t “arrive” so much as accumulate impressions.
Context matters. Writing in the early 20th century, Morley watched mechanization promise frictionless living while quietly shrinking experience into convenience. His bicycle is a democratic counter-symbol: inexpensive, self-powered, intimate with the neighborhood. It turns the writer into a participant rather than a spectator, someone who earns the view.
Calling it “the vehicle of novelists and poets” is also an identity play: the artist as lightly equipped, mobile, receptive. The subtext is almost moral. If you want to write about life, don’t insulate yourself from it. Pedal into it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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