Books give not wisdom where none was before. But where some is, there reading makes it more. Elizabeth Hardwick More Quotes by Elizabeth Hardwick More Quotes From Elizabeth Hardwick A letter is not a dialogue or even an omniscient exposition. It is a fabric of surfaces, a mask, a form as well suited to affectations as to the affections. The letter is, by its natural shape, self-justifying; it is one's own evidence, deposition, a self-serving testimony. In a letter the writer holds all the cards, controls everything about himself and about those assertions he wishes to make concerning events or the worth of others. For completely self-centered characters, the letter form is a complex and rewarding activity. Elizabeth Hardwick self wish character Houses of evil similarity appeared like rows of disciplined, humiliated orphans. Elizabeth Hardwick orphan evil house Writing is not "the establishment of a professional reputation" as if one were a doctor or lawyer; it is not properly in the sentence with creation of a family and the purchase of a home. Elizabeth Hardwick doctors home writing Harvard (across the river in Cambridge) and Boston are two ends of one mustache. ... Without the faculty, the visitors, the events that Harvard brings to the life here, Boston would be intolerable to anyone except genealogists, antique dealers, and those who find repletion in a closed local society. Elizabeth Hardwick boston rivers two They had created themselves together, and they always saw themselves, their youth, their love, their lost youth and lost love, their failures and memories, as a sort of living fiction. Elizabeth Hardwick lost-youth lost-love memories Biographers, the quick in pursuit of the dead, research, organize, fill in, contradict, and make in this way a sort of completed picture puzzle with all the scramble turned into a blue eye and the parts of the right leg fitted together. Elizabeth Hardwick eye together blue Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous. Elizabeth Hardwick without miserable nature age
