Jessamyn West

“Nothing ruins a face so fast as double-dealing. Your face telling one story to the world. Your heart yanking your face to pieces, trying to let the truth be known.”

“Knowledge of what you love somehow comes to you; you don’t have to read nor analyze nor study. If you love a thing enough, knowledge of it seeps into you, with particulars more real than any chart can furnish.”

“People who keep journals have life twice.”

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

“Groan and forget it.”

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

“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.”

“Some people are always thirsting for water from other people's wells.”

“If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.”

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

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

“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. ”

“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.”