Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey Quotes

We are all so much more complicated than we allow ourselves to appear.

I know now one must plan one's old age as surely as one plans any other stage of life. The tragedy of Cousin Josie's life is that she never knew what she wanted at any age - only what she did not want. She never wanted to marry nor to pursue a career, and in life, unlike grammar, double negatives do not produce an affirmative.

After tonight I will not date put pen to paper again. A blank page to me is like a drink to an alcoholic.

Sometimes I think it is ... frustration with life as it is lived day to day that compels me to write such long letters to people who seldom reply in kind, if indeed they reply at all. Somehow by compressing and editing the events of my life, I infuse them with a dramatic intensity totally lacking at the time, but oddly enough I find that years later what I remember is not the event as I lived it but as I described it in a letter.