Jessamyn West Quotes

The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness... view

By: Jessamyn West

If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier... view

By: Jessamyn West

Only a fool would refuse to enter a fool's paradise when that's the only paradise he'll ever have a chance to enter... view

By: Jessamyn West

Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants... view

By: Jessamyn West

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

By: Jessamyn West

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting... view

By: Jessamyn West

You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it... view

By: Jessamyn West

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... view

By: Jessamyn West

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions... view

By: Jessamyn West

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... view

By: Jessamyn West

The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow... view

By: Jessamyn West

The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate... view

By: Jessamyn West

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

By: Jessamyn West

Teaching is the royal road to learning... view

By: Jessamyn West

We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?.. view

By: Jessamyn West

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

By: Jessamyn West

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

By: Jessamyn West

Groan and forget it... view

By: Jessamyn West

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures... view

By: Jessamyn West

Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection.. view

By: Jessamyn West

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... view

By: Jessamyn West

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

By: Jessamyn West

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

By: Jessamyn West

A big iron needle stitching the country together... view

By: Jessamyn West

If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one... view

By: Jessamyn West

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

By: Jessamyn West

In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?.. view

By: Jessamyn West

In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults... view

By: Jessamyn West

It is very east to forgive others their mistakes.. view

By: Jessamyn West

Justice is a terrible but necessary thing... view

By: Jessamyn West

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

By: Jessamyn West