Quote

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.

Jessamyn West

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jessamyn West
Age: 81 †
Born: 1902
Born: July 18
Died: 1984
Died: February 22
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Indiana
United States
Mary Jessamyn West
Family
Complete
Undertakings
Natural
Friendship
Savage
Must
Creativity
Sustain
Writing
Writer
Savages
Enemy
Slightly
Alone
Solitary
Uninterrupted
Friends
Occupation
Preconceptions
Society
Enemies
Undertaking

More quotes by Jessamyn West

Image
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
Jessamyn West
Image
To meet at all, one must open ones eyes to another and there is no true conversation no matter how many words are spoken, unless the eye, unveiled and listening, opens itself to the other.
Jessamyn West
Image
Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.
Jessamyn West
Image
The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.
Jessamyn West
Image
People who keep journals have life twice
Jessamyn West
Image
It is not easy to be solitary unless you are also born ruthless. Every solitary repudiates someone.
Jessamyn West
Image
It is the loving, not the loved, woman who feels loveable.
Jessamyn West
Image
Being consistent meant not departing from convictions already formulated being a leader meant making other persons accept these convictions. It was a narrow track, and a one-way, but a person might travel a considerable distance on it. A number of dictators have.
Jessamyn West
Image
The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.
Jessamyn West
Image
Somehow I have the feeling that in some book is the great treasure I've been looking for all my life.
Jessamyn West
Image
The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.
Jessamyn West
Image
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?
Jessamyn West
Image
If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.
Jessamyn West
Image
A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.
Jessamyn West
Image
If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.
Jessamyn West
Image
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.
Jessamyn West
Image
In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults
Jessamyn West
Image
A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.
Jessamyn West
Image
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.
Jessamyn West
Image
You make what seems a simple choice: choose a man or a job or a neighborhood- and what you have chosen is not a man or a job or a neighborhood, but a life.
Jessamyn West