Quotes from 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.

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

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

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

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential.

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.

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

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.

A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.

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

People who keep journals have life twice.

I have done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.

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

Knowledge of what you love somehow comes to you; you don't have to read nor analyze nor study. If you love a thing enough, knowledge of it seeps into you, with particulars more real than any chart can furnish.

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.

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

Groan and forget it.

Nothing ruins a face so fast as double-dealing. Your face telling one story to the world. Your heart yanking your face to pieces, trying to let the truth be known.

Some people are always thirsting for water from other people's wells.

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

They darted like needles through the morning - they wove the bright May morning into a fabric strong enough to support a party.

In California, the first spring is in November. March only echoes.

Life's a shock to the young. Shock to have an old man for a father instead of an angel. Shock to eat ham gravy instead of dew drops. And to like ham gravy. That's the worst shock of all. Find yourself fitting into this sorry world.