Jessamyn West

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

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

“Groan and forget it.”

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

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”

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

“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.”

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

“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 s...”

“The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.”

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

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

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

“A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.”

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

“Teaching is the royal road to learning.”

“A big iron needle stitching the country together.”

“In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults.”

“Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.”