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Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

Rebecca West

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Rebecca West
Age: 90 †
Born: 1892
Born: December 21
Died: 1983
Died: March 15
Author
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Suffragette
Writer
London
England
Cicely Isabel Fairfield
Dame Cicely Isabel Fairfield
Artist
Art
Women
Authentic
Must
Critics
Work
Criticism
Argument
Audience
Start

More quotes by Rebecca West

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Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.
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In England and America a beard usually means that its owner would rather be considered venerable than virile on the continent of Europe it often means that its owner makes a special claim to virility.
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She saw she had fallen into the hands of one of those doctors who have strayed too far from apparent in the direction of the soul.
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Where there is real love one wants to go to church first.
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There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.
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Reason's a thing we dimly see in sleep.
Rebecca West
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Fiction and poetry are the only way one can stop time and give an account of an experience and nail it down so that it lasts for ever.
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It's an absurd error to put modern English literature in the curriculum. You should read contemporary literature for pleasure or not at all. You shouldn't be taught to monkey with it.
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I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
Rebecca West
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music is a missionary effort to colonize earth for imperialistic heaven.
Rebecca West
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A copy of the universe is not what is required of art one of the damned things is ample.
Rebecca West
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The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated he forgets truths which are too simple.
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Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.
Rebecca West
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Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted.
Rebecca West
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Music is part of human life and partakes of the human tragedy. There is much more music in the world than is allowed to change into heard sounds and prove its point.
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The principle of avoiding the unnecessary expenditure of energy has enabled the species to survive in a world full of stimuli but it prevents the survival of the aristocracy.
Rebecca West
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All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing.
Rebecca West
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You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is.
Rebecca West
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Mr. Arnold Bennett feels he has ranked himself for ever as a dry wine by what he mixed with himself of Maupassant nevertheless he has put on the market some grocer's Sauterne in the form of several novels that are highly sentimental so far as their fundamental balance of values is concerned.
Rebecca West
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Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse.
Rebecca West