Quotes By Rebecca West

The American struggle for the vote was much more difficult than the English for the simple reason that it was much more easy.

The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.

It is the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.

Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.

There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience.

We all drew on the comfort which is given out by the major works of Mozart, which is as real and material as the warmth given up by a glass of brandy.

All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.

There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.

Humanity is never more sphinxlike than when it is expressing itself.

A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.

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.

People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die.

Journalism: an ability to meet the challenge of filling the space.

The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.

It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.

Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.

It is always one's virtues and not one's vices that precipitate one into disaster.

Mr. James Joyce is a great man who is entirely without taste.

God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.

Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse.

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.

I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.

Because hypocrisy stinks in the nostrils one is likely to rate it as a more powerful agent for destruction than it is.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

Nobody likes having salt rubbed into their wounds, even if it is the salt of the earth.

But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.

International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.