I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of ...things. We think that that is which appears to be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The life of a creator is not the only life nor perhaps the most interesting which a man leads. There is a time for play and a time... for work, a time for creation and a time for lying fallow. And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean--when boredom seems the very stuff of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ways in which most men get their living, that is, live, are mere makeshifts, and a shirking of the real business of life,--chi...efly because they do not know, but partly because they do not mean, any better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ebb, ocean of life, (the flow will return,) Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother,... Endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me, Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet as I touch you or gather from you. I mean tenderly by you and all, I gather for myself and for this phantom looking down where we lead, and following me and mine.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't think men respect women ... [ellipsis in original] I don't think they really respect their opinions. I don't think they re...ally respect their ability to do a job. And, therefore, when it comes to the business of hiring somebody, they're always sort of hanging back and suspicious whether the woman would actually be able to do it. Meantime, these people that are doing this to you are people that you swamped when you were going through school. I don't mean that in a bitter way. I mean this is a fact of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, "I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me... the story of your life." I mean people are going to say, "You're crazy." Plus they're going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that's a reasonable kind of attention to be paid.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's not till sex has died out between a man and a woman that they can really love. And now I mean affection. Now I mean to be fon...d of (as one is fond of oneself)Mto hope, to be disappointed, to live inside the other heart. When I look back on the pain of sex, the love like a wild fox so ready to bite, the antagonism that sits like a twin beside love, and contrast it with affection, so deeply unrepeatable, of two people who have lived a life together (and of whom one must die) it's the affection I find richer. It's that I would have again. Not all those doubtful rainbow colours.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a life-and-death conflict between all those grand, universal, man-respecting principles which we call by the comprehensive t...erm democracy, and all those partial, person-respecting, class-favoring elements which we group together under that silver-slippered word aristocracy. If this war does not mean that, it means nothing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to wha...t? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You seem to have no real purpose in life and won't realize at the age of twenty-two that for a man life means work, and hard work ...if you mean to succeed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »