Politics & Power Quote by Irwin Shaw

"The romantic idea is that everybody around a writer must suffer for his talent. I think a writer is a citizen of humanity, part of his nation, part of his family. He may have to make some compromises"

Irwin Shaw, Novelist

About this Quote

Shaw is taking a knife to the glamorous myth of the writer as a holy menace: the gifted man whose genius licenses collateral damage. Calling that notion "romantic" is a quiet insult. He means romantic in the sentimental, self-serving sense - a story writers tell to justify being absent, cruel, or conveniently unreachable. The line works because it refuses the usual bargain culture offers artists: we forgive your bad behavior if you produce something transcendent. Shaw says the bargain is fake, and worse, it turns suffering into a credential.

The pivot to "citizen of humanity" is deliberately civic. Shaw frames authorship not as a private calling but as a public role with obligations and limits. In a postwar American context - with Shaw writing about social institutions, politics, and the pressures of conformity - that citizenship language signals a democratic ethic: talent doesn't annul your membership in ordinary life. You're still in the room; you still owe people basic decency.

"Compromises" is the sting. It's not surrendering artistic integrity so much as admitting the unsexy truth that art is made inside schedules, relationships, and responsibilities. Shaw is pushing back against the macho, solitary-genius pose, suggesting that discipline and empathy are not enemies of literature but conditions for it. The subtext is almost prosecutorial: if your work requires everyone else to bleed, maybe the talent isn't as rare as you think; maybe it's just entitlement with better prose.

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Topic	Writing
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About the Author

Irwin Shaw (February 27, 1913 - May 16, 1984) was a Novelist from USA.

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