Rebecca West
There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.Collection: Intelligence
Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.Collection: Trust
Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.Collection: Life
Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.Collection: Communication
Journalism: an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.Collection: Space
Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse.Collection: Mom
I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.
There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.
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.
Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.
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.
It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.
He is every other inch a gentleman.
Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself.
We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy.
The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.
A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.
All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.
It is always one's virtues and not one's vices that precipitate one into disaster.
The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.
Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.
Mr. James Joyce is a great man who is entirely without taste.
People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.
Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.
I write books to find out about things.
The memory, experiencing and re-experiencing, has such power over one's mere personal life, that one has merely lived.
A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.
Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.
Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.
It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.
But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.
Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.
I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?
There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience.
There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die.
The American struggle for the vote was much more difficult than the English for the simple reason that it was much more easy.
International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.
The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.Collection: Strength
What is art? It is not decoration. It is the re-living of experience.Collection: Art
Whatever happens, never forget that people would rather be led to perdition by a man, than to victory by a woman.Collection: Men
There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that one sometimes needs help with moving the piano.Collection: Sex
I am not so repelled by Communism: an element of Communism in politics is necessary and inevitable. In any involved society there must be a feeling that something must be done about poverty - which is the basis of communism.Collection: Feelings
No great thing happens suddenly.Collection: Change
The day was so delightful that I wished one could live slowly as one can play music slowly.Collection: Play
You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is.Collection: Life
Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity.Collection: Unity
Art is not a luxury, but a necessity.Collection: Art
All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing.Collection: Pain
Existence in itself, taken at its least miraculous, is a miracle.Collection: Taken