Jessamyn West

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?

Teaching is the royal road to learning.

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

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.

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

It is very east to forgive others their mistakes it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

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.

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.

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.