It took most people a lifetime to join the human race. Hortense Calisher More Quotes by Hortense Calisher More Quotes From Hortense Calisher The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes and hung them like bangles in my mind. Hortense Calisher shapesmindwriting It has always seemed to me that if you could talk about your work in fully-formed phrases, you wouldn't write it. The writing is the statement, you see, and it seems to me that the poem or the story or the novel you write is the kind of metaphor you cast on life. Hortense Calisher phrasesstorieswriting perhaps there's no sharper spur to meditation than answered prayer. Hortense Calisher spursmeditationprayer if you listen too hard to the technology, your ear goes deaf to its implications. Hortense Calisher deaftechnologyears But memory, after a time, dispenses its own emphasis, making a feuilleton of what we once thought most ponderable, laying its wreath on what we never thought to recall. Hortense Calisher wreathsemphasismemories Diplomacy is what is practiced after-the-fact. Never be too right too soon -- as any smart Uncle will tell you. The man who guesses what will happen will be blamed for it. No one will believe he has merely guessed. Hortense Calisher unclessmartbelieve Women can't travel light. We're in charge of the basic facts. Hortense Calisher lightfactstravel I get up and I have coffee and I speak to no man and I go to my desk. Hortense Calisher coffeespeakmen Agony without genius was gaucherie. Hortense Calisher agonygeniussuffering I always say that one's poetry is a solace to oneself and a nuisance to one's friends. Hortense Calisher solacenuisancepoetry This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action - I will write it out. Hortense Calisher successwritingideas In a family, the same spoken lines come in over and over. Intimacy exhausts. Hortense Calisher intimacylinesfamily I don't suppose there's really any critic except posterity. Hortense Calisher posteritycritics The novel is rescued life. Hortense Calisher novel A happy childhood can't be cured. Mine'll hang around my neck like a rainbow, that's all, instead of a noose. Hortense Calisher rainbowmemorieschildren The young show the genetic process, the old merely die of it. Hortense Calisher processshowsyoung The standard dreaming of a society has to be listened to. Hortense Calisher standardsdream What I have written-and how I came to write it-is most powerfully what I am. Hortense Calisher most-powerfulwrittenwriting 'Ms.' is a syllable which sounds like a bumble bee is breaking wind. Hortense Calisher soundbeeswind But the trek that starts with the feet always rises in time to the head. There had never been any of mankind's that didn't. Hortense Calisher mankindfeettravel