Jessamyn West Quotes

Quotes about:

• Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.

  Jessamyn West

  Courage, Writing, Helpful

  Jessamyn West (1986). “Woman Said Yes: Encounters with Life and Death”, Harcourt on Demand

  48 Copy quote

• Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

  Jessamyn West

  Happiness, Truth, Attitude

  Jessamyn West (1957). “To see the dream”

  29 Copy quote

• A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.

  Jessamyn West

  Love, Inspiring, Religious

  15 Copy quote

• A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.

  Jessamyn West

  Broken Heart, Forever, Bones

  Jessamyn West (1979). “The life I really lived: a novel”, Harcourt

  96 Copy quote

• The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

  Jessamyn West

  Past, History, Imagination

  Jessamyn West (1966). “A Matter of Time”

  6 Copy quote

• You make what seems a simple choice: choose a man or a job or a neighborhood- and what you have chosen is not a man or a job or a neighborhood, but a life.

  Jessamyn West

  Jobs, Simple, Men

  8 Copy quote

• Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

  Jessamyn West

  Friendship, Being Alone, Writing

  Jessamyn West (1973). “Hide and Seek: A Continuing Journey”, Harcourt

  14 Copy quote

• Somehow I have the feeling that in some book is the great treasure I've been looking for all my life.

  Jessamyn West

  Book, Feelings, Treasure

  4 Copy quote

• Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.

  Jessamyn West

  Nature, Memories, Women

  Jessamyn West (1979). “The life I really lived: a novel”, Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• There are two barriers that often prevent communication between the young and their elders. The first is middle-aged forgetfulness of the fact that they themselves are no longer young. The second is youthful ignorance of the fact that the middle aged are still alive.

  Jessamyn West

  Communication, Ignorance, Two

  Jessamyn West (1957). “To see the dream”

  14 Copy quote

• A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.

  Jessamyn West

  Challenges, Rattlesnakes, Teach

  The Life I Really Lived ch. 2 (1979)

  28 Copy quote

• One can write out of love or hate. Hate tells one a great deal about a person. Love makes one become the person. Love, contrary to legend, is not half as blind, at least for writing purposes, as hate. Love can see the evil and not cease to be love. Hate cannot see the good and remain hate. The writer, writing out of hatred, will, thus, paint a far more partial picture than if he had written out of love.

  Jessamyn West

  Hate, Writing, Evil

  Jessamyn West (1957). “To see the dream”

  9 Copy quote

• There is no royal path to good writing; and such paths as exist do not lead through neat critical gardens, various as they are, but through the jungles of self, the world, and of craft.

  Jessamyn West

  Writing, Garden, Self

  4 Copy quote

• Teaching is the royal road to learning.

  Jessamyn West

  Education, Teaching, Learning

  Jessamyn West (1979). “The life I really lived: a novel”, Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.

  Jessamyn West

  Writing, Punishment, Earth

  To See the Dream ch. 1 (1957)

  5 Copy quote

• I am always jumping into the sausage grinder and deciding, even before I’m half ground, that I don’t want to be a sausage after all.

  Jessamyn West

  Jumping, Half, Sausage

  Jessamyn West (1981). “Double discovery: a journey”, Macmillan Reference USA

  6 Copy quote

• It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

  Jessamyn West

  Forgiveness, Easter, Mistake

  27 Copy quote

• Nothing is so dear as what you're about to leave.

  Jessamyn West

  Dear God, Dear

  Jessamyn West (1979). “The life I really lived: a novel”, Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

• A good time for laughing is when you can.

  Jessamyn West

  Inspirational, Funny, Laughing

  8 Copy quote

• A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

  Jessamyn West

  Lost Love, Heart, Humor

  Jessamyn West (1957). “To see the dream”

  11 Copy quote

• I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.

  Jessamyn West

  Hurt, Honesty, Trying

  Jessamyn West (1979). “The life I really lived: a novel”, Harcourt

  9 Copy quote

• Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.

  Jessamyn West

  Writing, Past, Kind

  5 Copy quote

• Each death and departure comes to us as a surprise, a sorrow never anticipated. Life is a long series of farewells; only the circumstances should surprise us.

  Jessamyn West

  Farewell, Grieving, Long

  5 Copy quote

• The conversation of two people remembering, if the memory is enjoyable to both, rocks on like music or lovemaking. There is a rhythm and a predictability to it that each anticipates and relishes.

  Jessamyn West

  Memories, Rocks, Two

  Jessamyn West (1984). “The state of Stony Lonesome”, Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults. They frolic with animals, caress them, share with them feelings neither has words for. Have they ever stroked any adult with the love they bestow on a cat? Hugged any grownup with the ecstasy they feel when clasping a puppy?

  Jessamyn West

  Children, Cat, Animal

  Jessamyn West (1979). “The life I really lived: a novel”, Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

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