Rebecca West Quotes

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.

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

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

I am not so repelled by Communism: an element of Communism in politics is necessary and inevitable. In any involved society there must be a feeling that something must be done about poverty - which is the basis of communism.

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

There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that one sometimes needs help with moving the piano.

What is art? It is not decoration. It is the re-living of experience.

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

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

All our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing.

No great thing happens suddenly.

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

The day was so delightful that I wished one could live slowly as one can play music slowly.

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

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

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

Art is not a luxury, but a necessity.

Submission to poverty is the unpardonable sin against the body. Submission to unhappiness is the unpardonable sin against the spirit.

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

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

I really write to find out what I know about something and what is to be known about something.

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

Marriage had certain commercial advantages. By it the man secures the exclusive right to the woman's body and by it, the woman binds the man to support her during the rest of her life.... A more disgraceful bargain was never struck.

Nobody ever wrote a good book simply by collecting a number of accurate facts and valid ideas.

the law, like art, is always vainly racing to catch up with experience.