Jean Stafford Quotes

You say that you hope I will be recognized as the best novelist of my generation. I want you to know now and know completely that that would mean to me absolutely nothing.

I read Wolfe's new book _ The Story of a Novel_ and as usual he stole the whole damn thing from me. I am going to write and say will you please stop writing books you bastard.

To her own heart, which was shaped exactly like a valentine, there came a winglike palpitation, a delicate exigency, and all the fragrance of all the flowery springtime love affairs that ever were seemed waiting for them in the whisky bottle. To mingle their pain their handshake had promised them, was to produce a separate entity, like a child that could shift for itself, and they scrambled hastily toward this profound and pastoral experience.

For all practical purposes I left home when I was 7.

From time to time, I need a rest from the exercitation of my intellect.

He does what I have always needed to have done to me, and that is that he dominates me.

Irony, I feel, is a very high form of morality.

I am growing meaner by the hour.