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

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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
Writing
Writer
Savages
Enemy
Slightly
Alone
Solitary
Uninterrupted
Friends
Occupation
Preconceptions
Society
Enemies
Undertaking
Family
Complete
Undertakings
Natural
Friendship
Savage
Must
Creativity
Sustain

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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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If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.
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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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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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The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.
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Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.
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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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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.
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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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The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.
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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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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.
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Nothing is so dear as what you're about to leave.
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It is the loving, not the loved, woman who feels loveable.
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A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.
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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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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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In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults
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A good time for laughing is when you can.
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We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?
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