19 quotes
I'm not afraid of life and I'm not afraid of death: Dying's the bore.
Miracles are instantaneous, they cannot be summoned, but come of themeselves, usually at unlikely moments and to those who least expect them.
Ship of Fools (1962)
I don't want any promises, I won't have false hopes, I won't be romantic about myself.
I finished the thing; but I think I sprained my soul.
On her novel Ship of Fools (1962)
The human heart is not yet so corroded that it can read off the extinction of these two men without a shock to the very roots of its belief in justice and humanity.
There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgment has already been pronounced and the trial is just a mask for murder.
The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
At least I can know the truth about what happens to me, she assured herself silently, making a promise to herself, in her hopefulness, her ignorance.
Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty.
The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, and the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused.
The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own — even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.
You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.
Writers at Work interview (1963)
It is my firm belief that all our lives we are preparing to be somebody or something, even if we don’t do it consciously.
Writers at Work interview (1963)
They had both noticed that a life of dissipation sometimes gave to a face the look of gaunt suffering spirituality that a life of asceticism was supposed to give and quite often did not.
Ship of Fools (1962)
She finally came to admit sadly that the human race in its weakness demanded government and all government was evil because human nature was basically weak and weakness is evil.
The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
There is no such thing as a good government. There never was. There can't be.
The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
This is not new — all the history of our world is pocked with it. It is very grand and noble in words and grand, noble souls have died for it — it is worth weeping for.
The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)
The road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end? The barriers sink one by one, and no covering of the eyes shuts out the landscape of disaster, nor the sight of crimes committed there.
I have no patience with this dreadful idea that whatever you have in you has to come out, that you can’t suppress true talent. People can be destroyed; they can be bent, distorted and completely crippled.
Writers at Work interview (1963)
The State goes on without end in one form or another, built securely on the base of destruction. Nietzsche said: "The State is the coldest of all cold monsters," and the revolutions which destroy or weaken at least one monster bring to birth and growth another.
The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)