Jessamyn West Quotes & Sayings

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

“Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.”

“A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.”