Jessamyn West

“A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.”

“Teaching is the royal road to learning.”

“Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”