Jessamyn West
Quotes 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.
— 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.
— Jessamyn West
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
It is very east to forgive others their mistakes it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.
— Jessamyn West
The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.
— 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.
— Jessamyn West
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
— Jessamyn West
Teaching is the royal road to learning.
— 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?
— Jessamyn West