Gail Godwin Quotes

• Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.

  Gail Godwin

  Inspirational, Thank You, Education

  59 Copy quote

• One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are.

  Gail Godwin

  Friendship, Appreciation, Appreciate

  Gail Godwin (2011). “The Finishing School”, p.5, Ballantine Books

  50 Copy quote

• There are two kinds of people. One kind, you can just tell by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves. It might be a very nice self, but you know you can expect no more surprises from it. Whereas, the other kind keep moving, changing... They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion, they are the only people who are still alive. You must be constantly on your guard against congealing.

  Gail Godwin

  Nice, Moving Forward, Two

  32 Copy quote

• Some things arrive in their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever.

  Gail Godwin

  Time, Memories, Forever

  23 Copy quote

• The characters that I create are parts of myself and I send them on little missions to find out what I don’t know yet.

  Gail Godwin

  Character, Littles, Missions

  28 Copy quote

• Negative people present us with an accelereted personal growth opportunity.

  Gail Godwin

  Opportunity, People, Growth

  18 Copy quote

• The best antidote I have found is to yearn for something. As long as you yearn, you can't congeal: There is a forward motion to yearning.

  Gail Godwin

  Long, Forward Motion, Found

  Gail Godwin (1985). “The finishing school”, Viking Pr

  16 Copy quote

• The act of longing for something will always be more intense than the requiting of it.

  Gail Godwin

  Longing, Intense

  14 Copy quote

• The more you respect and focus on the singular and the strange, the more you become aware of the universal and infinite.

  Gail Godwin

  Focus, Strange, Infinite

  Gail Godwin, Shannon Ravenel (1985). “The Best American short stories, 1985”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  14 Copy quote

• Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language.

  Gail Godwin

  Dream, Mean, Language

  Gail Godwin (2011). “The Finishing School”, p.3, Ballantine Books

  23 Copy quote

• None of us suddenly becomes something overnight. The preparations have been in the making for lifetime.

  Gail Godwin

  Success, Reality, Preparation

  9 Copy quote

• How easy it was to make people happy, when you didn't want or need anything from them.

  Gail Godwin

  People, Needs, Want

  9 Copy quote

• If there is such a thing as sin in this world, I think it must be shutting oneself up against hope.

  Gail Godwin

  Hope, Thinking, World

  10 Copy quote

• Actors between plays are like ghosts looking for bodies to inhabit.

  Gail Godwin

  Play, Actors, Body

  Gail Godwin (2011). “The Finishing School”, p.144, Ballantine Books

  7 Copy quote

• Something's your vocation if it keeps making more of you.

  Gail Godwin

  Vocation, Ifs

  Gail Godwin (1999). “Evensong”

  10 Copy quote

• During the act of writing I have told myself something that I didn't know I knew.

  Gail Godwin

  Writing, Knows

  8 Copy quote

• I confess, right at the start, to the doubts - and sometimes outright dreads - that go with me as I climb the stairs to my study in the morning, coffee mug in hand: I have to admit to the habitual apprehension mixed with a sort of reverence, as I light the incense . . . and wonder: what is going to happen today? Will anything happen? Will the angel come today?

  Gail Godwin

  Morning, Coffee, Angel

  7 Copy quote

• Much of the activity we think of as writing is, actually, getting ready to write.

  Gail Godwin

  Writing, Thinking, Ready

  5 Copy quote

• I believe that with enough practice and good faith, you can learn to recognize when the work is achieved.

  Gail Godwin

  Believe, Practice, Enough

  7 Copy quote

• I believe that dreams transport us through the underside of our days, and that if we wish to become acquainted with the dark side of what we are, the signposts are there, waiting for us to translate them.

  Gail Godwin

  Dream, Believe, Dark

  10 Copy quote

• Hope does not necessarily have to take an object.

  Gail Godwin

  Hope, Doe, Objects

  9 Copy quote

• I work continuously within the shadow of failure. For every novel that makes it to my publisher's desk, there are at least five or six that died on the way. And even with the ones I do finish, I think of all the ways they might have been better.

  Gail Godwin

  Thinking, Shadow, Might

  5 Copy quote

• Learning when 'enough is enough' is the discipline of a lifetime.

  Gail Godwin

  Art, Discipline, Lifetime

  9 Copy quote

• I'm always aware that I risk being taken for a neurasthenic prima donna when I explain to someone who wants 'just a little' of my time that five minutes of the wrong kind of distraction can ruin a working day.

  Gail Godwin

  Taken, Risk, Want

  5 Copy quote

• What did a few ripples in the flesh matter when, all too soon, now or later, that flesh would be making its return journey to dust?

  Gail Godwin

  Journey, Dust, Would Be

  4 Copy quote

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