Rebecca West Quotes

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.

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

Yes,” said Mamma, “this is the worst of life, that love does not give us common sense but is a sure way of losing it. We love people, and we say that we are going to do more for them than friendship, but it makes such fools of us that we do far less, indeed sometimes what we do could be mistaken for the work of hatred.

To be afraid of sorrow is to be afraid of joy also.

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

I had come to Yugoslavia to see what history meant in flesh and blood.

Now, he told me, I could see what humanity was worth. It could form the conception of justice, but could not trust its flesh to provide judges. Whatever it started was likely to end in old men raving. There was ruin everywhere and we should see more of it.

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

She understood children, and knew that they were adults handicapped by a humiliating disguise and had their adult qualities within them.

Now I recall my emotions at that moment, children seem to me a remarkable race. They want so much to murder so many people, and they so rarely murder anybody at all.