Quotes from Jessamyn West

Teaching is the royal road to learning.

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

Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.

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.

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.

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

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