Rebecca West Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.

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

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

The mind is its own enemy, that fights itself with the innumerable pliant and ineluctable arms of the octopus.

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

Literature must be an analysis of experience and a synthesis of the findings into a unity.

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

Whatever happens, never forget that people would rather be led to perdition by a man, than to victory by a woman.

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

You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is.

Existence in itself, taken at its least miraculous, is a miracle.

Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.

I wonder if we are all wrong about each other, if we are just composing unwritten novels about the people we meet?

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

Motherhood is neither a duty nor a privilege, but simply the way that humanity can satisfy the desire for physical immortality and triumph over the fear of death.

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

I find to my astonishment that an unhappy marriage goes on being unhappy when it is over.

Once a secret society establishes itself within an open society, there is no end to the hideous mistrust it must cause.

Art is not a luxury, but a necessity.

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.

Idiocy is the female defect ... It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy.

Time spent in a casino is time given to death, a foretaste of the hour when one's flesh will be diverted to the purposes of the worm and not of the will.

He is every other inch a gentleman.

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.

If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone might well be: 'It seemed like a good idea at the time.'

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.

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

Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other's nostrils with an offensiveness beyond the power of any but the most monstrous private deed.

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

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

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.

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

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

the reward for total abstinence from alcohol seems, illogically enough, to be the capacity for becoming intoxicated without it.

I have no faith in the sense of comforting beliefs which persuade me that all my troubles are blessings in disguise.

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.

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

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

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

The choice between law and justice is an easy one for courageous minds.

Unhappy people are dangerous.

I cannot see that art is anything less than a way of making joys perpetual.

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

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

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