Fay Weldon Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• One must be careful with words. Words turn probabilities into facts and by sheer force of definition translate tendencies into habits.

  Fay Weldon

  Definitions, Facts, Habit

  5 Copy quote

• One sort of believes in recycling. But one believes in it as a kind of palliative to the gods.

  Fay Weldon

  Believe, Recycling, Kind

  "This Much I Know". Interview with Lucy Siegle, www.theguardian.com. August 30, 2009.

  9 Copy quote

• It is easier for the reader to judge, by a thousand times, than for the writer to invent. The writer must summon his Idea out of nowhere, and his characters out of nothing, and catch words as they fly, and nail them to the page. The reader has something to go by and somewhere to start from, given to him freely and with great generosity by the writer. And still the reader feels free to find fault.

  Fay Weldon

  Book, Reading, Character

  5 Copy quote

• Writing is an act of generosity toward other people.

  Fay Weldon

  Writing, People, Generosity

  4 Copy quote

• Youth gives a sense of new days dawning bright, going on for ever, and a kind of tamped-down excitement which keeps breaking through even the worst days of poverty, depression and loneliness. But then youth is something which only exists in retrospect; you are barely conscious of it while you have it.

  Fay Weldon

  Loneliness, Giving, New Day

  4 Copy quote

• All mothers love their own children as best they can, according to their temperament and circumstances, and all mothers should have done better, in their children's eyes, when the going gets tough for the children.

  Fay Weldon

  Mother, Children, Eye

  6 Copy quote

• Fiction, on the whole, and if it is any good, tends to be a subversive element in society.

  Fay Weldon

  Fiction, Elements, Literature

  4 Copy quote

• One can learn, at least. One can go on learning until the day one is cut off.

  Fay Weldon

  Learning, Cutting, Goes On

  5 Copy quote

• Because one cause is bad does not make the opposing cause good.

  Fay Weldon

  Doe, Causes, Logic

  Fay Weldon (2011). “Letters to Alice”, p.68, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

• I learned that sex was not a question of victory or defeat, of pleasure or profit: of a hand's manipulation and a physical response: I learned that in its purest pleasure it belongs to neither of those who practise it, in the same way as a child belongs to neither parent: it is a free spirit: it simply exists.

  Fay Weldon

  Sex, Children, Hands

  4 Copy quote

• Novelists... fashioning nets to sustain and support the reader as he falls helplessly through the chaos of his own existence.

  Fay Weldon

  Fall, Support, Novelists

  4 Copy quote

• Ambition will, and should, always outstrip achievement.

  Fay Weldon

  Ambition, Achievement, Should

  Fay Weldon (2011). “Letters to Alice”, p.78, Hachette UK

  5 Copy quote

• Much sheer effort goes into avoiding the truth; left to itself, it sweeps in like the tide.

  Fay Weldon

  Acceptance, Effort, Tides

  4 Copy quote

• Yet this perhaps is what love does, or the memory of it; it sucks the life from the living, glorying body and leaves it, when love has gone, a shred, a simulacrum - dross, to be swept up from the factory floor, pitiful and dusty, useless... Do all men and women feel love before they die? This force, this source of light, that lies before the sun; glances off mountains and lakes, blinding and dazzling, on a Sunday afternoon; so brilliant you have to guard your soul, fold your arms to shield your heart from the very memory of it.

  Fay Weldon

  Memories, Lying, Heart

  4 Copy quote

• People fail you, children disappoint you, thieves break in, moths corrupt, but an Order of the British Empire goes on for ever.

  Fay Weldon

  Children, Order, People

  5 Copy quote

• by and large, nothing is as bad as you fear, or as good as you hope.

  Fay Weldon

  Hope, Fear, Expectations

  Fay Weldon (2007). “Auto da Fay: A Memoir”, p.266, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• No one should be allowed to give back the gift of life, unless they are very old and full of tears, when the body outlives the spirit, when they should be allowed to join the others who've already gone.

  Fay Weldon

  Giving, Tears, Gone

  4 Copy quote

• I know truth is more like a mountain that has to be scaled. The peak of the mountain pierces the clouds and can only rarely be seen, and has never been reached. And what you see of it, moreover, depends upon the flank of the mountain you stand upon, and how exhausted getting even so far has made you. Virtue lies in looking upwards, toiling upwards, and sometimes joyously leaping from one precarious crag of fact and feeling to the next.

  Fay Weldon

  Lying, Clouds, Feelings

  Fay Weldon (2012). “The President’s Child”, p.6, HarperCollins UK

  4 Copy quote

• The New Women! I could barely recognize them as being of the same sex as myself... They are satiated by everything, hungry for nothing. They are what I wanted to be; they are what I worked for them to be: and now I see them, I hate them.

  Fay Weldon

  Sex, Hate, Hungry

  "Praxis: A Novel". Book by Fay Weldon, 1978.

  4 Copy quote

• If infinity is as they describe it, all things are not just possible but in the end certain.

  Fay Weldon

  Infinity, Eternity, Ends

  4 Copy quote

• Confidence is something one acquires. It can come early or late but it is impossible to write without it. Mine came late.

  Fay Weldon

  Confidence, Writing, Impossible

  4 Copy quote

• Prudence says one thing, desire says another, and I'd rather go with desire any time.

  Fay Weldon

  Desire, Prudence, One Thing

  Fay Weldon (2007). “Auto da Fay: A Memoir”, p.345, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• There is probably an innate masochism in a lot of women that ends up disappointed if men don't ill-treat them.

  Fay Weldon

  Men, Ends, Treats

  4 Copy quote

• She could see that to lose a sibling was hard: it could only seem unnatural:out of time, out of order, a vicious re-run of your own departure into nothingness.

  Fay Weldon

  Running, Sibling, Order

  Fay Weldon (1997). “Worst Fears”, p.130, Atlantic Monthly Press

  9 Copy quote

• Instinct' usually just means our conditioning to believe this or believe that, without thinking to investigate.

  Fay Weldon

  Believe, Mean, Thinking

  Fay Weldon (2011). “Letters to Alice”, p.32, Hachette UK

  7 Copy quote

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