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Gail Godwin
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“Her profession was words and she believed in them deeply. The articulation, interpretation, appreciation, and preservation of good words. She believed in their power. If you truly named something, you had that degree of control over it. Words could incite, soothe, destroy, exorcise, redeem.”
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“... life is a disease ...”
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“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater ...”
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“If there is such a thing as sin in this world, I think it must be shutting oneself up against hope.”
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“Hope does not necessarily have to take an object ...”
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“What did a few ripples in the flesh matter when, all too soon, now or later, that flesh would be making its return journey to dust?”
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“Yes, the race of children possesses magically sagacious powers!”
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“Heroics are not easily had for the young in our times. Perhaps that is why they go to such extremes to create their own dangers.”
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“... some things ... arrive in their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever.”
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“I work continuously within the shadow of failure. For every novel that makes it to my publisher's desk, there are at least five or six that died on the way. And even with the ones I do finish, I think of all the ways they might have been better.”
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“... the act of longing for something will always be more intense than the requiting of it.”
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“... one is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are.”
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“I believe that our dreams transport us through the underside of our days, and that if we wish to become acquainted with the dark side of what we are, the signposts are there, waiting for us to translate them.”
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“Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language.”
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“I read constantly. If I don't have a good book, I'm beside myself.”
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“I'm always aware that I risk being taken for a neurasthenic prima donna when I explain to someone who wants 'just a little' of my time that five minutes of the wrong kind of distraction can ruin a working day.”
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“At times ... one is downright thankful for the self-absorption of other people.”
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“None of us suddenly becomes something overnight. The preparations have been in the making for a lifetime.”
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“Much of the activity we think of as writing is, actually, getting ready to write.”
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“Learning when 'enough is enough' is the discipline of a lifetime.”
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“I believe that with enough practice and good faith, you can learn to recognize when the work is achieved.”
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“The more you respect and focus on the singular and the strange, the more you become aware of the universal and infinite.”
Gail Godwin, U.S. writer, journalist, educator
(1937)
Full name: Gail Kathleen Godwin.