Wallace Stegner Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• Creation is a knack which is empowered by practice, and like almost any skill, it is lost if you don't practice it.

  Wallace Stegner

  Writing, Practice, Skills

  8 Copy quote

• Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?

  Wallace Stegner

  People, Interesting, Seems

  Wallace Stegner (2007). “Crossing to Safety”, p.20, Modern Library

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• Any life will provide the material for writing, if it is attended to.

  Wallace Stegner

  Writing, Materials, Ifs

  Wallace Stegner (2002). “On Teaching and Writing Fiction”, p.32, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

• In fiction I think we should have no agenda but to tell the truth.

  Wallace Stegner

  Thinking, Should Have, Fiction

  5 Copy quote

• No life goes past so swiftly as an eventless one, no clock spins like a clock whose days are all alike.

  Wallace Stegner

  Past, Clock

  Wallace Stegner (1971). “Angle of Repose”, Penguin Group USA

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• This early piece of the morning is mine.

  Wallace Stegner

  Morning, Pieces, Mines

  Wallace Stegner (2007). “Crossing to Safety”, p.5, Modern Library

  8 Copy quote

• Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?... Do we all buzz or ring or light up when people press our vanity buttons, and only then? Can I think of anyone in my whole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me?

  Wallace Stegner

  Thinking, Vanity, Light

  10 Copy quote

• He used to tell me, 'Do what you like to do. It'll probably turn out to be what you do best.

  Wallace Stegner

  Used, Turns

  Wallace Stegner (2007). “Crossing to Safety”, p.51, Modern Library

  6 Copy quote

• Have a chance to create a society to match its scenery.

  Wallace Stegner

  Rugged Individualism, Chance, Scenery

  Wallace Stegner (2015). “The Sound of Mountain Water: The Changing American West”, p.31, Vintage

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• Expose a child to a particular environment at this susceptible time and he will perceive in the shapes of that environment until he dies.

  Wallace Stegner

  Inspirational, Motivational, Education

  Wallace Stegner (2000). “Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier”, p.36, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• You can't retire to weakness -- you've got to learn to control strength.

  Wallace Stegner

  Inspirational, Weakness, Retiring

  Wallace Stegner (2000). “Angle of Repose”, p.454, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

• History is not the proper midden for digging up novelties. Perhaps that is one reason why a nation bent on novelty ignores it.

  Wallace Stegner

  Digging, Reason Why, Novelty

  Wallace Stegner (2008). “The Twilight of Self Reliance: Frontier Values and Contemporary America”

  9 Copy quote

• I may not know who I am, but I know where I am from.

  Wallace Stegner

  Who I Am, May, Knows

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• Thanks to the growing strength of environmental organizations, there will always be some back country to provide us with a touch of wonder and a breath of fresh air.

  Wallace Stegner

  Country, Air, Land

  7 Copy quote

• There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance, said the Ellen Ward of my dream, that woman I hate and fear. I am sure she meant some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning together from the vertical which produces the false arch.

  Wallace Stegner

  Two, Hopeful, Brain

  "Angle of Repose".

  10 Copy quote

• One means of sanity is to retain a hold on the natural world, ... Americans still have that chance, more than many peoples.

  Wallace Stegner

  Mean, World, Chance

  Wallace Stegner (2015). “The Sound of Mountain Water: The Changing American West”, p.119, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

• [I]t is dangerous for a bride to be apologetic about her husband.

  Wallace Stegner

  Husband, Wife, Apologetic

  Wallace Stegner (2000). “Angle of Repose”, p.72, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• There is nothing like a doorbell to precipitate the potential into the kinetic.

  Wallace Stegner

  Wallace Stegner (2007). “Crossing to Safety”, p.32, Modern Library

  8 Copy quote

• A muddy little stream, a village grown unfamiliar with time and trees. I turn around and retrace my way up Main Street and park and have a Coke in the confectionery store. It is run by a Greek, as it used to be, but whether the same Greek or another I would not know. He does not recognize me, nor I him. Only the smell of his place is familiar, syrupy with old delights, as if the ghost of my first banana split had come close to breathe on me.

  Wallace Stegner

  Running, Smell, Tree

  Wallace Stegner (2000). “Wolf Willow: A History, a Story, and a Memory of the Last Plains Frontier”, p.29, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

• To try to save for everyone, for the hostile and independent as well as the committed, some of the health that flows down across the green ridges from the skyline, and some of the beauty and spirit that are still available to any resident of the valley who has a moment and the wit to lift up his eyes unto the hills.

  Wallace Stegner

  Eye, Independent, Trying

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• We need wilderness preserved-as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds-because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed.

  Wallace Stegner

  Character, People, Challenges

  Wallace Earle Stegner (2007). “The Selected Letters of Wallace Stegner”, Counterpoint

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• Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers. If they arrive at college with literary ambitions, they should be told that everything they have done since their first childhood poems, printed in the school paper, has been preparation for entering a long, long apprenticeship.

  Wallace Stegner

  Writing, Ambition, School

  "On Teaching and Writing Fiction".

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• It is the abiding concern of thinking people to preserve what keeps men human-to save our contact with nature of which we are a part.

  Wallace Stegner

  Men, Thinking, People

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• You married me...but you didn't marry what you could make out of me.

  Wallace Stegner

  Married, Make Out

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• You achieve stature only by being good enough to deserve it, by forcing even the contemptuous and indifferent to pay attention, and to acknowledge that human relations and human emotions are of inexhaustible interest wherever they occur.

  Wallace Stegner

  Attention, Pay, Emotion

  Wallace Earle Stegner (1995). “Where the bluebird sings to the lemonade springs: living and writing in the West”, Random House Value Pub

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