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Katherine Mansfield Letters And Journals: A Selection QUOTES

Katherine Mansfield Letters And Journals: A Selection QUOTES

1 " I sometimes wonder whether the act of surrender is not one of the greatest of all - the highest. It is one of the [most] difficult of all... You see it's so immensely complicated. It needs real humility and at the same time, an absolute belief in one's own essential freedom. It is an act of faith. At the last moments, like all great acts, it is pure risk. This is true for me as a human being and as a writer. Dear Heaven, how hard it is to let go - to step into the blue. And yet one's creative life depends on it and one desires to do nothing else. "

― Katherine Mansfield , Katherine Mansfield Letters And Journals: A Selection

2 " Don’t you think the stairs are a good place for reading letters? I do. One is somehow suspended. One is on neutral ground - not in one’s own world nor in a strange one. They are an almost perfect meeting place. Oh Heavens! How stairs do fascinate me when I think of it. Waiting for people - sitting on strange stairs - hearing steps far above, watching the light playing by itself - hearing - far below a door, looking down into a kind of dim brightness, watching someone come up. But I could go on forever. Must put them in a story though! People come out of themselves on stairs - they issue forth, unprotected. "

― Katherine Mansfield , Katherine Mansfield Letters And Journals: A Selection

3 " Don't forget that dragons are only guardians of treasures and one fights them for what they keep - not for themselves... "

― Katherine Mansfield , Katherine Mansfield Letters And Journals: A Selection

4 " We are solitary creatures au fond. It hapens so rarely that one feels another understands. But when one does feel it, it's not only a joy, it's a help and comfort in dark moments. "

― Katherine Mansfield , Katherine Mansfield Letters And Journals: A Selection

5 " Is it not possible that the rage for confession, autobiography, especially for memories of earliest childhood, is explained by our persistent yet mysterious belief in a self which is continuous and permanent; which, untouched by all we acquire and all we shed, pushes a green spear through the dead leaves and through the mould, thrusts a scaled bud through the year of darkness until, one day, the light discovers it and shakes the flower free and - we are alive - we are flowering for our moment upon the earth? "

― Katherine Mansfield , Katherine Mansfield Letters And Journals: A Selection

6 " The English language is damned difficult, but it's also damned rich, and so clear and bright that you can search out the darkest places with it. "

― Katherine Mansfield , Katherine Mansfield Letters And Journals: A Selection

7 " You know the feeling that a great writer gives you: my spirit has been fed and refreshed; it has partaken of something new. "

― Katherine Mansfield , Katherine Mansfield Letters And Journals: A Selection