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The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

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
Much
Really
Imagination
Almost
Future
History
Past
Work

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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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People who keep journals have life twice
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Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.
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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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The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.
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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.
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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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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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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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The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.
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A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.
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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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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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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.
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A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.
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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.
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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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If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.
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Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
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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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