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Home
Authors
Jessamyn West
American
Author
About the author
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.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Ignorance
#First
#Fact
#Communication
#Forgetfulness
The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Sorrow
#Joy
The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#World
Nothing is so dear as what you're about to leave.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Nothing
Teaching is the royal road to learning.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Teaching
#Road
#Learning
We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Love
A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Word
The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Work
#Past
#Imagination
#Future
Groan and forget it.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Forget
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Reality
#Fiction
Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Words
#Death
#Past
#Writing
#Faithfulness
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,
American
Author
#Sense
#Humor
#Taste
#Irony
Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Will
#Nature
#Memory
A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Nothing
A big iron needle stitching the country together.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Country
If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Want
#Old
#Baby
I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Hurt
#Trying
#Harm
#Honesty
In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Want
#Time
#Man
#Woman
In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Children
#Animals
It is very east to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Mistakes
Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Justice
A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Love
#Religious
The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Earth
#Colors
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.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#People
#Will
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.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Chance
#Fool
#Paradise
Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Writing
#Talent
The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Acting
#Actor
You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#End
#Business
#Beginning
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,
American
Author
#Family
#Occupation
#Friends
#Enemies
#Society
#Writing
#Writer
We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.
Jessamyn West,
American
Author
#Want
#Change
#Facts