Writing fiction is an endless and always defeated effort to capture some quality of life without killing it. Rose Wilder Lane More Quotes by Rose Wilder Lane More Quotes From Rose Wilder Lane Houses are the abiding joys; they are the most emotion-stirring of all things. An automobile is regarded with fond affection, a typewriter becomes the inseparable companion, clothes can stir sentimentality, and the bit of bric-a-brac is a toy one would weep to see torn away - but houses are real, deep, emotional things. How much excitement in the cutting of a window, what enormous importance in the angle of a roof! Rose Wilder Lane cutting emotional real Plants and animals repeat routine, but men who are not restrained will go into the future like explorers into a new country. Rose Wilder Lane animal men country Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog. There is something under our feet, the taken-for-granted. A table is a table, food is food, we are we - because we don't question these things. And science is the enemy because it is the questioner. Faith saves our souls alive by giving us a universe of the taken-for-granted. Rose Wilder Lane taken life science I somehow always have this idea that as soon as I can get through this work that's piled up ahead of me, I'll really write a beautiful thing. But I never do. I always have the idea that someday, somehow, I'll be living a beautiful life. Rose Wilder Lane writing beautiful ideas Two deep human desires were at war ... the longing for stability, for form, for permanence, which in its essence is the desire for death, and the opposing hunger for movement, change, instability and risk, which are life. Men came from the east and built these American towns because they wished to go no farther, and the towns they built were shaped by the urge to go onward. Rose Wilder Lane essence men war I came out of the Soviet Union no longer a communist, because I believed in personal freedom. Rose Wilder Lane communist personal-freedom unions I ask myself, 'why am I so lazy?' and am too lazy to reply. Rose Wilder Lane lazy asks laziness As novices, we think we're entirely responsible for the way people treat us. I have long since learned that we are responsible only for the way we treat people. Rose Wilder Lane learning long thinking An Old World revolution is only a movement around a motionless center; it never breaks out of the circle. Firm in the center is belief in Authority. Rose Wilder Lane circles break-out movement I so much like real things - the realities that come naturally from the depths of us like - what shall I say? - the way trees grow, from some inner essential principle of them, just expressing itself. Rose Wilder Lane principles real tree Curiosity is the hunger of the human mind. Rose Wilder Lane hunger curiosity mind The first twenty years of my life were wasted. I didn't fit my environment, and I didn't know any other. Rose Wilder Lane twenties years firsts Making the best of things is a damn poor way of dealing with them. My life has been a series of escapes from that quicksand. Rose Wilder Lane poor damn way A kiss without a mustache is like an egg without salt. Rose Wilder Lane mustache kissing eggs Life is a thin narrowness of taken-for-granted, a plank over a canyon in a fog. Rose Wilder Lane fog taken life-is Even the street, the sunshine, the very air had a special Sunday quality. We walked differently on Sundays, with greater propriety and stateliness. Greetings were more formal, more subdued, voices more meticulously polite. Everything was so smooth, bland, polished. And genuinely so, because this was Sunday. In church the rustling and the stillness were alike pervaded with the knowledge that all was for the best. Propriety ruled the universe. God was in His Heaven, and we were in our Sunday clothes. Rose Wilder Lane sunshine sunday air I am too sick to work and haven't money enough to last 2 months and pay income tax. I want to keep going but do not see quite how, and there is no alternative - rather than justify my mother's 25-year dread of my "coming back on her, sick," I must kill myself. If she has to pay funeral costs, at least she will cut them to the bone and I will not be here to endure her martyrdom and prolong it by living. Rose Wilder Lane cutting mother years The prairies were dust. Day after day, summer after summer, the scorching winds blew the dust and the sun was brassy in a yellow sky. Crop after crop failed. Again and again the barren land must be mortgaged for taxes and food and next year's seed. The agony of hope ended when there was not harvest and no more credit, no money to pay interest and taxes; the banker took the land. Then the bank failed. Rose Wilder Lane dust summer years I can imagine nothing more wonderful than always wanting to keep a man. It's this NOT wanting to keep them, and yet not quite being able to disentangle one's self, never quite having the ruthlessness to stike at the hands on the gunwale with an oar until they let go - that's the horrible thing. Rose Wilder Lane self letting-go men The real protection of life and property, always and everywhere. Rose Wilder Lane property protection real
