Quotes from Jessamyn West

He lived where he was, began to enjoy the moment he was in, instead of fuming about the moment of departure which should have, and had not, arrived. These were his life's beatitudes, times when his own nature did not separate him from his life; when the needle of his being held steady at the very moment and place of his existence. It was his ambition to live his whole life in this way; though he had schemes and plans for everything else, he knew no way to scheme himself into such moments.

Roth wrote The Breast . Would you ask him how he could do this since he had never been a breast? Adams wrote Watership Down . Would you ask him how he could do this since he admitted his rabbit knowledge came from a book about rabbits? ... And those hobbits!... I am a bigger risk-taker than these others. The Hoosiers can contradict me. No rabbit, hobbit, or breast has been known to speak up in reply to their exploiters.

But Lon was not only entertainment; he mixed entertainment with information like a modern novelist who not only gives you a lot of love-making, but also leaves you, when the lovers part, with a lot of information about running a hotel, avoiding sharks, or living in a kibbutz.

Writing is so difficult that writers having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment here after.

Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

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.

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?

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.

Suffering is also one of the ways of knowing you're alive.

Groan and forget it.

The emotion, the ecstasy of love, we all want, but God spare us the responsibility.

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

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

A big iron needle stitching the country together.