Jean Stafford Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

A small silence came between us, as precise as a picture hanging on the wall.

Jean Stafford
Indeed, the sole criticism of him was that he prolonged beyond the point of decency, his look of nuptial rapture and the vagueness which rendered him, in conversation, slightly stupid.

Jean Stafford
She did observe, with some dismay, that far from conquering all, love lazily sidestepped practical problems.

Jean Stafford
There were two objects of conversation; one was the food they were eating and the other was the food they had eaten at other times.

Jean Stafford
Alcohol flings back, almost illimitably, the boundaries of humor so that we can find uproarious things which our poor sober friends miss altogether. It is necessary, if the joke is really good and really should be shared, to repeat it time and again until finally it penetrates those solemn skulls.

Jean Stafford
Nothing can more totally subdue the passions than familial piety.

Jean Stafford
That grin! She could have taken it off her face and put it on the table.

Jean Stafford
Falling in love is not an abrupt plunge; it is a gradual descent, seldom in a straight line, rather like the floating downward of a parachute. And the expression is imperfect because while one may fall one also levitates.

Jean Stafford
If there is whistling in the great beyond, I'll kill myself.

Jean Stafford
Mrs. Fowler hated men so passionately that no one could dream why she married so many of them.

Jean Stafford
She was not sure whether she had had a dream just now or whether there was something she had meant to remember or to think about that was troubling her aged mind like a rat in a wall.

Jean Stafford
To her own heart, which was shaped exactly like a valentine, there came a winglike palpitation, a delicate exigency, and all the fragrance of all the flowery springtime love affairs that ever were seemed waiting for them in the whiskey bottle.

Jean Stafford
You'll never get to be an old lady if you don't take care of yourself.

Jean Stafford
Whiskey and music, I reflected, especially when taken together, made time fly incredibly fast.

Jean Stafford
Generations should not be mingled for daily fare, she thought; they are really contemptuous of one another, and the strong individuals, whether they belong to the older or the younger, impose on the meek their creeds and opinions, and, if they are strong enough, brook no dissent.

Jean Stafford