Quote

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.

Jessamyn West

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Jessamyn West
Age: 81 †
Born: 1902
Born: July 18
Died: 1984
Died: February 22
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Indiana
United States
Mary Jessamyn West
Takes
Joke
Sense
Kept
Heart
Jokes
Oneself
Hearts
Appreciate
Preconceptions
Taste
Irony
Humor
Breaking

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In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults. They frolic with animals, caress them, share with them feelings neither has words for. Have they ever stroked any adult with the love they bestow on a cat? Hugged any grownup with the ecstasy they feel when clasping a puppy?
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The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.
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Somehow I have the feeling that in some book is the great treasure I've been looking for all my life.
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Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.
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The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.
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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.
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Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
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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.
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With enough libraries, all content is free.
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A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.
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Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.
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Nothing is so dear as what you're about to leave.
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The conversation of two people remembering, if the memory is enjoyable to both, rocks on like music or lovemaking. There is a rhythm and a predictability to it that each anticipates and relishes.
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Knowledge of what you love somehow comes to you you don’t have to read nor analyze nor study. If you love a thing enough, knowledge of it seeps into you, with particulars more real than any chart can furnish.
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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.
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It is not easy to be solitary unless you are also born ruthless. Every solitary repudiates someone.
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