Jessamyn West

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential.

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.

It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

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

A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.

Writing is so difficult that I often feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.

Knowledge of what you love somehow comes to you; you don’t have to read nor analyze nor study. If you love a thing enough, knowledge of it seeps into you, with particulars more real than any chart can furnish.