Jessamyn West Quotes

• 

  Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

  Jessamyn West

  Topics in Truth

  Tags in Reveals, Fiction, Reality, Books
• 

  Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential.

  Jessamyn West

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Courage, Absolutely, Writing
• 

  The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

  Jessamyn West

  Topics in Future, Past, Work

  Tags in Really, Almost

• 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

  Topics in Age, Youth

  Tags in Communication

• 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

  Topics in Humor

  Tags in Hearts, Appreciate, Breaking

• 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

  Topics in Failure

  Tags in Forgiveness

• Suffering is also one of the ways of knowing you’re alive.

  Jessamyn West

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Adversity

• 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

  Topics in Family, Friendship

  Tags in Solitude, Writers And Writing

• 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

• 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

• We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?

  Jessamyn West

• The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.

  Jessamyn West

• The source of one’s joy is also often the source of one’s sorrow.

  Jessamyn West

• 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

• The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

  Jessamyn West

• Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.

  Jessamyn West

• 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

• Nothing is so dear as what you’re about to leave.

  Jessamyn West

• Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.

  Jessamyn West

• Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.

  Jessamyn West

Jessamyn West (33)

Birth:	18th July, 1902
Death:	23rd February, 1984
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Writer

About

Mary Jessamyn West was born in Vernon, Jennings County, Indiana, USA. She was an American novelist and short story writer. She earned a BA degree in English from Whittier College in 1923. She also studied at the University of California, Berkeley and Oxford University. She wrote several novels include: The Friendly Persuasion, The Witch Diggers (Nominations: National Book Award for Fiction), A Matter of Time, Leafy Rivers, and Except for Me and Thee. She wrote several short stories include: Cress Delahanty, and Collected Stories of Jessamyn West. She has written other books include: To see the dream, Love is not what you think (nonfiction), The Quaker Reader, Hide and Seek, The secret look (poetry), The Massacre at Fall Creek (fiction, Won- Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize), The Woman Said Yes (memoir), and Double Discovery.

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