Quote: Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience. [Rebecca West]
Quote: People call me feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute. [Rebecca West]
Quote: There is no wider gulf in the universe than yawns between those on the hither and thither side of vital experience. [Rebecca West]
Quote: He is every other inch a gentleman. [Rebecca West]
Quote: Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves. [Rebecca West]
Quote: But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example. [Rebecca West]
Quote: 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. [Rebecca West]
Quote: She saw she had fallen into the hands of one of those doctors who have strayed too far from apparent in the direction of the soul. [Rebecca West]
Quote: I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet? [Rebecca West]
Quote: The main difference between men and woman is that men are lunatics and woman are idiots. [Rebecca West]
Quote: All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears. [Rebecca West]
Quote: Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on social change if they are to reform or even maintain civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility. [Rebecca West]
Quote: There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all. [Rebecca West]
Quote: All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life. [Rebecca West]
Quote: 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. [Rebecca West]
Quote: Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication. [Rebecca West]
Quote: In England and America a beard usually means that its owner would rather be considered venerable than virile; on the continent of Europe it often means that its owner makes a special claim to virility. [Rebecca West]
Quote: 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. [Rebecca West]
Quote: Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind. [Rebecca West]
Quote: It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk. [Rebecca West]
Quote: There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence. [Rebecca West]
Quote: International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge. [Rebecca West]
Quote: Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul. [Rebecca West]
Quote: Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse. [Rebecca West]
Quote: Great music is in a sense serene it is certain of the values it asserts. [Rebecca West]