Blaise Cendrars, Paris, ca 1955 -by Robert Doisneau   [+]

Écrire est une vue de l’esprit. C’est un travail ingrat qui mène à la solitude.
— Blaise Cendrars, in ‘L’homme froudroyé’

He (Cendrars) has been the most rewarding, to me, of all contemporary French writers. If, in the early stages on my career, it was Knut Hamsun whom I idolized, whom I most desired to imitate, in the latter stage it has been Cendrars. With the exception of John Cowper Powys, no writer I have come to contact with, gives more than he. He gives and he sends. He is inexhaustible. Among all living writers he is the one who has lived the most, lived the fullest. Beside him, for example, Ernest Hemingway is a Boy Scout.
— Henry Miller, in ‘The Henry Miller reader’ (1969)

from verdeau