“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.”
— Jessamyn West
Communication
“The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.”
— Jessamyn West
Future
“Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.”
— Jessamyn West
Imagination
“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.”
— Jessamyn West
Death
“It is very east to forgive others their mistakes it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.”
— Jessamyn West
Forgiveness
“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.”
— Jessamyn West
Humor
“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.”
— Jessamyn West
Alone
“In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?”
— Jessamyn West
Success
“Teaching is the royal road to learning.”
— Jessamyn West
Learning