Quote

The only difficulty is to know what bits to choose and what to leave out. Novel-writing is not creation, it is selection.

Winifred Holtby

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Winifred Holtby
Age: 37 †
Born: 1898
Born: June 23
Died: 1935
Died: September 29
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Suffragette
Writer
Rudston
East Riding of Yorkshire
Selection
Difficulty
Choose
Creation
Novel
Leave
Bits
Writing

More quotes by Winifred Holtby

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It's the things you don't do, not the things you do, you feel most sorry for.
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I would, if I could, always feed to music. The singularly graceless action of thus filling one's body with roots and dead animals and powdered grain is given some significance then. One can perform as a ritual what one is shamed to do as a utilitarian action.
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There's never been a lack of men willing to die bravely. The trouble is to find a few able to live sensibly.
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Teachers have power. We may cripple them by petty economics by Government regulations, by the foolish criticism of an uninformed press but their power exists for good or evil.
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no truth is strong enough to defeat a well-established legend.
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I find you in all small and lovely things in the little fishes like flames in the green water, in the furred and stupid softness of bumble-bees fat as laughter, in all the chiming radiance of warmth and light and scent in the summer garden.
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we are so little, so ignorant, so feeble an infant race crawling on a planet between immensities we haven't even begun to understand, that really we have no grounds for either congratulation or despair.
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The more I see of dogs, the more I like children.
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What with the reviews of critics, the sarcasms of one's friends, the reproaches of one's own taste, there's precious little peace after publishing a book.
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Oh, time betrays us. Time is the great enemy.
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Really, trees are nearly as important as men, and much better behaved.
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Those who prepare for war get it.
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When a person that one loves is in the world and alive and well, and pleased to be in the world, then to miss them is only a new flavor, a salt sharpness in experience. It is when the beloved is unhappy or maimed or troubled that one misses with pain.
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Youth knows no remedy for grief but death.
Winifred Holtby
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The greatest mercy, I have often thought, of the Mediterranean coast lies in its mosquitoes. Did we not suffer from their unwelcome attention, we could not bear our holidays to end.
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Remorse ... is one of the many afflictions for which time finds a cure.
Winifred Holtby
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I am fierce for work. Without work I am nothing.
Winifred Holtby
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[On golf:] One of the most distressing defects of civilization.
Winifred Holtby
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I can't think why I was cursed with this inordinate desire to write, if the high gods weren't going to give me some more adquate means of expressing myself than that which my present pedestrian prose affords.
Winifred Holtby
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Is this the final treachery of time, that the old become a burden upon the young?
Winifred Holtby