Quotes from Nancy Milford

To be a biographer is a somewhat peculiar endeavor. It seems to me it requires not only the tact, patience, and thoroughness of a scholar but the stamina of a horse.

I am wild, if you like; but I stayed in my burrow a long, long time, - nibbling your straws and snapping at your fingers, but always just a little out of reach. Until at last I got to trust you so much that one day I ventured out for a minute, - and you threw rocks at me. And I will never come out again.

In reality, there is no materialist like the artist, asking back from life the double and the wastage and the cost on what he puts out in emotional usury.

There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.

I hope I'll never get ambitious enough to try anything. It's so much nicer to be damned sure I could do it better than other people - and I might not could if I tried...

My candle burns at both ends;   It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—   It gives a lovely light!

When man is no longer his own master, custodian of his own silly vanities and childish contentments he's nothing at all—being in the first place only an agent of a very experimental stage of organic free will

It was not, Zelda wrote, prosperity or the softness of life, or any instability that marred the war generation; it was a great emotional disappointment resulting from the fact that life moved in poetic gestures when they were younger and had since settled back into buffoonery.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

But it was not her beauty that was arresting. It was her style, a sort of insolence toward life, her total lack of caution, her fearless and abundant pride.

The men came from every imaginable economic and social level of American life, "men who were better dressed in their uniforms than ever before in their lives," as Zelda wrote later, "and men from Princeton and Yale who smelled of Russian Leather and seemed very used to being alive…." The larger world that Zelda dreamed of was at her doorstep and accessible.

He fought for his very survival. If he fought dirty sometimes that does not diminish the fact that he refused to give up.

I was in love with a whirlwind and I must spin a net big enough to catch it

A vida é por vezes triste e muitas vezes aborrecida mas de vez em quando há groselhas no bolo.»

Please don't be depressed: nothing is sad about you except your sadness...

Jack Reed, whom The New York Times had labeled "the Bolshevik agitator," hesitated and then equivocated on the stand. But by then the defense of The Masses was plain: criticism of the government didn't amount to a desire to overthrow it. If all hostile opinion were suppressed, how could Americans believe they lived in a free country? Dissent was a safeguard to freedom, not an impediment.

I never cry at the theatre. It seems to me that I feel things far too deeply, too deep down in my heart, to---to splash on top!

One of the first things Vincent explained to Norma was that there was a certain freedom of language in the Village that mustn't shock her. It wasn't vulgar. 'So we sat darning socks on Waverly Place and practiced the use of profanity as we stitched. Needle in, shit. Needle out, piss. Needle in, fuck. Needle out, cunt. Until we were easy with the words.

Zelda was a creature who overflowed with activity, radiant with desire to take from life every chance her charm, youth, and intelligence provided so abundantly.

One of the first things Vincent explained to Norma was that there was a certain freedom of language in the Village that mustn't shock her. It wasn't vulgar. 'So we sat darning socks on Waverly Place and practiced the use of profanity as we stitched. Needle in, . Needle out, piss. Needle in, . Needle out, c. Until we were easy with the words.

It's the first time I've seen early morning in a terribly long time— The sun all yellow and red, like a huge luminous peach hanging on a black shadow-tree—just visible thru the mist—

Sweetheart, please don't worry about me— I want to always be a help—You know I am all yours and love you with all my heart.