"There are so many good authors; there's no shortage of them"
About this Quote
A lesser celebrity might treat culture like a buffet: a little name-dropping here, a little gatekeeping there. Jeanne Calment, accidentally famous for outliving everyone, does something slyer. "There are so many good authors; there's no shortage of them" lands like a shrug, but it’s a quiet rebuke to the panic baked into modern taste-making: the fear that if you haven’t read the right book, discovered the right voice, you’ve missed the moment.
The line’s power is its anti-scarcity attitude. Calment isn’t weighing in on a canon; she’s puncturing the myth that greatness is rare and access is fragile. Coming from a celebrity (and a historical oddity), it also flips the usual hierarchy. We expect famous people to anoint favorites, to perform discernment as a kind of status. Calment refuses the performance. Her authority comes not from expertise but from scale: a century of living makes cultural hype look small. Trends rise, reputations wobble, publishers churn; the supply of strong writing persists.
There’s subtext in the repetition, too. "So many" then "no shortage" doubles down, as if she’s insisting against an unseen interviewer’s need for a single recommendation, a single definitive answer. It’s an elegant defense of abundance: read widely, relax your FOMO, stop treating literature like a limited-edition drop. In an attention economy that thrives on scarcity, Calment offers the most radical luxury: calm.
The line’s power is its anti-scarcity attitude. Calment isn’t weighing in on a canon; she’s puncturing the myth that greatness is rare and access is fragile. Coming from a celebrity (and a historical oddity), it also flips the usual hierarchy. We expect famous people to anoint favorites, to perform discernment as a kind of status. Calment refuses the performance. Her authority comes not from expertise but from scale: a century of living makes cultural hype look small. Trends rise, reputations wobble, publishers churn; the supply of strong writing persists.
There’s subtext in the repetition, too. "So many" then "no shortage" doubles down, as if she’s insisting against an unseen interviewer’s need for a single recommendation, a single definitive answer. It’s an elegant defense of abundance: read widely, relax your FOMO, stop treating literature like a limited-edition drop. In an attention economy that thrives on scarcity, Calment offers the most radical luxury: calm.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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