Home > Author > Rebecca West
1 " The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. "
― Rebecca West
2 " Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs. "
3 " Yes,” said Mamma, “this is the worst of life, that love does not give us common sense but is a sure way of losing it. We love people, and we say that we are going to do more for them than friendship, but it makes such fools of us that we do far less, indeed sometimes what we do could be mistaken for the work of hatred. "
― Rebecca West , The Fountain Overflows
4 " I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute. "
― Rebecca West , The Young Rebecca: Writings, 1911-1917
5 " Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted. If one’s own existence has no form, if its events do not come handily to mind and disclose their significance, we feel about ourselves as if we were reading a bad book. "
― Rebecca West , Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
6 " I had come to Yugoslavia to see what history meant in flesh and blood. "
7 " [On Jane Austen] She was fully possessed of the idealism which is a necessary ingredient of the great satirist. If she criticized the institutions of earth, it was because she had very definite ideas regarding the institutions of heaven. "
8 " You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is. "
9 " To be afraid of sorrow is to be afraid of joy also. "
10 " She understood children, and knew that they were adults handicapped by a humiliating disguise and had their adult qualities within them. "
11 " I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. "
12 " I will believe that the battle of feminism is over, and that the female has reached a position of equality with the male, when I hear that a country has allowed itself to be turned upside-down and led to the brink of war by its passion for a totally bald woman writer. "
13 " People call me a feminist whenever I express statements that distinguish me from a doormat. "
14 " Indeed, grief is not the clear melancholy the young believe it. It is like a siege in a tropical city. The skin dries and the throat parches as though one were living in the heat of the desert; water and wine taste warm in the mouth, and food is of the substance of the sand; one snarls at one's company; thoughts prick one through sleep like mosquitoes. "
― Rebecca West , The Return of the Soldier
15 " The word “idiot” comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: men are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature. "
16 " Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul. "
17 " [N]obody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth. "
― Rebecca West , The Harsh Voice
18 " Now I recall my emotions at that moment, children seem to me a remarkable race. They want so much to murder so many people, and they so rarely murder anybody at all. "
19 " For the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up the deep peace of being in opposition. "
20 " Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience. "
