Rebecca West

“Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.”

“There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.”

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

“A strong hatred is the best lamp to bear in our hands as we go over the dark places of life, cutting away the dead things men tell us to revere.”

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

“It is sometimes very hard to tell the difference between history and the smell of skunk.”

“International relationships are preordained to be clumsy gestures based on imperfect knowledge.”

“Life ought to be a struggle of desire toward adventures whose nobility will fertilize the soul.”

“Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse.”

“Great music is in a sense serene it is certain of the values it asserts.”

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

“Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.”