Quotes from Dawn Powell

I cannot exist without the oxygen of laughter.

The artist who really loves people loves them so well the way they are he sees no need to disguise their characteristics-he loves them whole, without retouching. Yet the word used for this unqualifying affection is 'cynicism'.

A novel must be a rich forest known at the start only by instinct.

Bad weather friends were as undependable as fair weather friends in a crisis, the relationship in both cases being dictated by conditions of fortune instead of mutual tastes.

There is something more annoying than pleasant in finding neighbors from back home chiselling in on your own exclusive New York. It mitigates your triumph in having conquered the great city and brings home the ungratifying truth that anyone can do it.

Love, dear friends, begins with curiosity.

What were you to do when you didn't know anyone who could help you, no one who could explain the way to the things you wanted- what could you do- you couldn't just take a spade, a few bricks, and a gerenium and see what happened. You had to be rich, you had to be educated; you had to be powerful to stop contagious ugliness from spreading.

A capacity for going overboard is a requisite for a full-grown mind.

No one but a person who has been guilty himself could read guilt in others so well.

Rage swept over her at being young, young and little, as if some evil fairy had put that spell on her. Why must you be locked up in this dreadful cage of childhood for twenty or a hundred years? Nothing in life was possible unless you were old and rich, until then you were only small and futile before your tormentors, desperately waiting for the release that only years could bring.

Modesty's no credit to anyone-it's just a social grace.

How serious is it to cut out that little section behind the brow that separates what a Nice Girl Sees and Hears from What Really Happens.

Friendship in youth represents sympathy without understanding; in age, understanding without sympathy.

It was not a jolly place at all for a sun-loving soul

She would like to be on a train named Nightfall going to some place where she'd be twenty-five years old.

It was frightening to wake up in the morning and know that love did not last, no matter how it was treated.

Oh, of course, it was a sad role, the lover no longer loving. But once the perfunctory sympathy was given him the heart went outfully to oneself, the real victim, the unloved.

That's the way people were. Nobody believed in the things you believed but yourself, nobody believed that even you were really sincere about it, people believed whatever was good business for them at the time. Nobody believed in anything but good business.

Nothing will cut New York but a diamond. ?

That's why I ca never be happy with simple, good people", she thought. "It isn't enough to be honest and good-to be happy they must pretend. They really must!

Once you have made up your mind to drop a person it is most inconsiderate of them not to come within dropping distance.

My great ambition has always prevented me from doing anything.

Sometimes she wondered if there could be a limit to these twilight voyages, if some day she would stray too far and there would be no bridge nor bell to bring her home.

That's why I can never be happy with simple, good people", she thought. "It isn't enough to be honest and good-to be happy they must pretend. They really must!