Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Jessamyn West: Knowledge of What You Love

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”
― Jessamyn West

“Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential.”
― Jessamyn West

“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. ”
― Jessamyn West

“It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.”
― Jessamyn West

“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

“A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.”
― Jessamyn West

“Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.”
― Jessamyn West

“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

“People who keep journals have life twice.”
― Jessamyn West

“Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.”
― Jessamyn West

“I have done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.”
― Jessamyn West

“If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.”
― Jessamyn West

“Groan and forget it.”
― Jessamyn West

“Nothing ruins a face so fast as double-dealing. Your face telling one story to the world. Your heart yanking your face to pieces, trying to let the truth be known.”
― Jessamyn West

“Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.”
― Jessamyn West

“I am always jumping into the sausage grinder and deciding, even before I’m half ground, that I don’t want to be a sausage after all.”
― Jessamyn West, Double Discovery

“Some people are always thirsting for water from other people's wells.”
― Jessamyn West

“You can only write about what you don't know, and find out about it in the writing.”
― Jessamyn West, Collected Stories of Jessamyn West

No comments: