Jessamyn West quotes

A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever. (Jessamyn West)
It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own. View quote
Jessamyn West
We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint? View quote
Jessamyn West
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? View quote
Jessamyn West
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. View quote
Jessamyn West
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures. View quote
Jessamyn West
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. View quote
Jessamyn West
Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract. View quote
Jessamyn West
A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself. View quote
Jessamyn West
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. View quote
Jessamyn West
In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults. (Jessamyn West)
Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary. View quote
Jessamyn West
A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain. View quote
Jessamyn West
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. View quote
Jessamyn West
Teaching is the royal road to learning. View quote
Jessamyn West
A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing. View quote
Jessamyn West
The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future. View quote
Jessamyn West
If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one. View quote
Jessamyn West
It is the loving, not the loved, woman who feels loveable. View quote
Jessamyn West
We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't, it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions. View quote
Jessamyn West
I never meet anyone nowadays who admits to having had a happy childhood. Everyone appears to think happiness betokens a lack of sensitivity. (Jessamyn West)
I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt. View quote
Jessamyn West
Justice is a terrible but necessary thing. View quote
Jessamyn West
The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate. View quote
Jessamyn West
The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness. View quote
Jessamyn West