Jessamyn West Quotes

151 Sourced Quotes

Applause is nothing compared with laughter. Anyone can clap hands, and the mind be miles away. A laugh comes right from the center. No wonder comedians love their audiences.

Jessamyn West
No one can be taught to be a writer. But it is possible to learn to write better.

Jessamyn West
A jokester needs to see two things at once, appearance and reality.

Jessamyn West
Every arrival foretells a leave-taking: every birth a death. Yet each death and departure comes to us as a surprise, a sorrow never anticipated. Life is a long series of farewells; only the circumstances should surprise us.

Jessamyn West
Lawyers' work required sharp brains, strong vocal chords, and an iron butt.

Jessamyn West
But February was like a snake with a broken back. It could still bite.

Jessamyn West
The mind must move. When there is nothing to go forward to, it explores the past. The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

Jessamyn West
You're not called on to like everything in this world. Nor to speak up about all you don't like.

Jessamyn West
Birdeen fainted the way other people took a nap. She wouldn't take a rest of her own free will. Nature gave her a rest by letting her lie down unconscious for a few minutes.

Jessamyn West
Summer on the desert dies like a snake. You think it's done for, dead as a doornail, then there comes another fierce burst of life. And even that violent lashing may not be final.

Jessamyn West
The emotion, the ecstasy of love, we all want, but God spare us the responsibility.

Jessamyn West
Sex and religion are bordering states. They use the same vocabulary, share like ecstasies, and often serve as a substitute for one another.

Jessamyn West
Visitors to Los Angeles, then and now, were put out because the residents of Los Angeles had the inhospitable idea of building a city comfortable to live in, rather than a monument to astonish the eye of jaded travelers.

Jessamyn West
Almost all travel is lost on teen-agers.... The young do not discover the world. They discover themselves, and travel only interrupts their trips to the interior.

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
Love is all things
Both high and low
And nothing else
Can hurt you so.

Jessamyn West
Pleasure in irony, either in your own life or in what you read, is an ego trip. 'I know what others do not.'

Jessamyn West
I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.

Jessamyn West
What's too much for the law to see is too much for the law to require.

Jessamyn West
Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.

Jessamyn West
Suffering is also one of the ways of knowing you're alive.

Jessamyn West
The prohibition against solitude is forever. A Carry Nation rises in every person when he thinks he sees someone sneaking off to be alone. It is not easy to be solitary unless you are also born ruthless. Every solitary repudiates someone.

Jessamyn West
None but the lonely heart, they say, keeps a diary. None but a lonelier heart, perhaps, reads one. The diary keeper has no one to speak to; the diary reader has no one who speaks to him. The diary writer is at least talking to himself. The diary reader is listening to a man talking to himself.

Jessamyn West
Why do men resist putting gas in their cars until the last minute?... There's not much left in life for men to gamble about. They can gamble about the gas.

Jessamyn West
July was the month when summer, like bread in the oven, might change color, but it would rise no higher. It was at its height.

Jessamyn West
Solitude, like a drug, can be addictive. The more you have it, the more you want it.

Jessamyn West
The body's language is stronger than sounds shaped by the tongue and teeth.

Jessamyn West
We are forever in the dark about what touch means to another.... With touch, one enters at once a private and an ambiguous world.

Jessamyn West
I almost feel as if I am not a complete human being unless I have that pen in my hand.

Jessamyn West
Being consistent meant not departing from convictions already formulated; being a leader meant making other persons accept these convictions. It was a narrow track, and a one-way, but a person might travel a considerable distance on it. A number of dictators have.

Jessamyn West