Katherine Mansfield Quotes

Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent Bay was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered hills at the back were smothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks and bungalows began. ~ Katherine Mansfield

This is not a letter but my arms around you for a brief moment. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Courage is like a disobedient dog, once it starts running away it flies all the faster for your attempts to recall it. ~ Katherine Mansfield

What I feel for you can't be conveyed in phrasal combinations; It either screams out loud or stays painfully silent but I promise - it beats words. It beats worlds. ~ Katherine Mansfield

It's a terrible thing to be alone
yes it is
it is
but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath
as terrible as you like
but a mask. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I saw myself driving through Eternity in a timeless taxi. ~ Katherine Mansfield

EM Forster never gets any further than warming the tea pot ... Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain't going to be no tea. ~ Katherine Mansfield

No, she never recovered, madam. She had a stroke at the end. Last words she ever said was - very slow, "Look in - the - Look - in - " And then she was gone. ~ Katherine Mansfield

In fact, isn't it a joy - there is hardly a greater one - to find a new book, a living book, and to know that it will remain with you while life lasts? ~ Katherine Mansfield

The smell of leaves and wet black earth mingled with the sharp smell of the sea. ~ Katherine Mansfield

It was; she lifted her head and smiled. Only two people shared her "special" seat: a fine old man in a velvet coat, his hands clasped over a huge carved walking-stick, and a big old woman, sitting upright, with a roll of knitting on her embroidered apron. They did not speak. This was disappointing, for Miss Brill always looked forward to the conversation. She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her. She glanced, sideways, at the old couple. Perhaps they would go soon. Last Sunday, too, hadn't been as interesting as usual. An Englishman and his wife, he wearing a dreadful Panama hat and she button boots. And she'd gone on the whole time about how she ought to wear spectacles; she knew she needed them; but that ~ Katherine Mansfield

Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Now's the time when children's noses
All become as red as roses
And the colour of their faces
Makes me think of orchard places
Where the juicy apples grow,
And tomatoes in a row. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Last night I spent in her arms - and tonight I hate her - which being interpreted, means that I adore her; that I cannot lie in my bed and not feel the magic of her body. I feel more powerfully all those so-termed sexual impulses with her than I have with any man. She enthrals, enslaves me - and her personal self - her body absolute - is my worship. ~ Katherine Mansfield

It seemed to her that she had never known what the night was like before. Up till now it had been dark, silent, beautiful very often - oh yes - but mournful somehow. Solemn. And now it would never be like that again - it had opened dazzling bright. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Oh, impossible. Fancy cream puffs so soon after breakfast. The very idea made one shudder. All the same, two minutes later Jose and Laura were licking their fingers with that absorbed inward look that only comes from whipped cream. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Got a little - well - feeble as you might say. Of course, she was never dangerous; she was the sweetest old lady. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I think I hate snow, downright hate it. There is something stupefying in it, a kind of 'You must be worse before you're better,' and down it spins. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I am a recluse at present & do nothing but write & read & read & write ~ Katherine Mansfield

Wind moving through grass so that the grass quivers. This moves me with an emotion I don't even understand. ~ Katherine Mansfield

There is no feeling to be compared with the feeling of having written and finished a story. ~ Katherine Mansfield

That's all life is - something childish and very natural. Isn't it? ~ Katherine Mansfield

I'd always rather be with people who loved me too little rather than with people who loved me too much. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship, was that one had to explain nothing ~ Katherine Mansfield

To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure. ~ Katherine Mansfield

When we reached home your cheeks were like roses, and your eyes were shining like stars, and you tried to tell Mummy so much in one breath that I thought you would burst. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I used to believe I was merely words and I do not know whether I shall start hoping for something more. You planted that sense of hope in a secret deeply hidden place; it had walls made of bricks and huge abandoned gardens full of despair. It was covered in dusty waves and it was kept underground where no soul would ever walk. And you walked there - you planted hope. And now I cannot imagine myself without it. ~ Katherine Mansfield

The whole world shall be ours because of our love. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness. ~ Katherine Mansfield

We cling to our last pleasures as the tree clings to its last leaves. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Winter is a terrible time for thin people - terrible! Why should it hound them down, fasten on them, worry them so? Why not, for a change, take a nip, take a snap at the fat ones who wouldn't notice? But no! It is sleek, warm, cat-like summer that makes the fat one's life a misery. Winter is all for bones ... ~ Katherine Mansfield

Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can't I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening - where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I'd like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Shadow children, thin and small,
Now the day is left behind,
You are dancing on the wall,
On the curtains, on the blind. ~ Katherine Mansfield

In the forest, in the forest, silence had cast a spell over all things. She plucked a great bouquet of daffodils and snowdrops, and tenderly held them to her, and tenderly kissed their fresh spring faces. She did not sing at all, but sat silent, expectant, and wondering, till her flowers faded and withered in her hands. ~ Katherine Mansfield

The lights, the azaleas, the dresses, the pink faces, the velvet chairs, all became one beautiful flying wheel. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change of attitude. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. ~ Katherine Mansfield

It seems to me just as imbecile, just as infernal, to have to go to the office on Monday," said Jonathan, "as it always has done and always will do. To spend all the best years of one's life sitting on a stool from nine to five, scratching in somebody's ledger! It's a queer use to make of one's . . . one and only life, isn't it? Or do I fondly dream?" He rolled over on the grass and looked up at Linda. "Tell me, what is the difference between my life and that of an ordinary prisoner? ~ Katherine Mansfield

Life never become a habit to me. It's always a marvel. ~ Katherine Mansfield

What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I love to close my eyes a moment and think of the land outside, white under the mingled snow and moonlight--the heaps of stones by the roadside white--snow in the furrows. Mon Dieu! How quiet and how patient! ~ Katherine Mansfield

The English language is damned difficult, but it's also damned rich, and so clear and bright that you can search out the darkest places with it. ~ Katherine Mansfield

How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you - you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences - like rags and shreds of your very life. ~ Katherine Mansfield

To and fro, to and fro over the fine red sand on the floor of the dove house, walked the two doves. One was always in front of the other. One ran forward, uttering a little cry, and the other followed, solemnly bowing and bowing. "You see," explained Anne, "the one in front, she's Mrs. Dove. She looks at Mr. Dove and gives that little laugh and runs forward, and he follows her, bowing and bowing. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Love hasn't got anything to do with the heart, the heart's a disgusting organ, a sort of pump full of blood. Love is primarily concerned with the lungs. People shouldn't say "she's broken my heart" but "she's stifled my lungs." Lungs are the most romantic organs: lovers and artists always contract tuberculosis. It's not a coincidence that Chekhov, Kafka, D.H. Lawrence, Chopin, George Orwell and St Thérèse of Lisieux all died of it; as for Camus, Moravia, Boudard and Katherine Mansfield, would they have written the same books if it werent for TB? ~ Frederic Beigbeder

I really only have Perfect Fun with myself. Other people won't stop and look at the things I want to look at or, if they do, they stop to please me or to humor me or to keep the peace. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Roses are the only flowers at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Can one do nothing for the dead? And for a long time the answer had been - Nothing! ~ Katherine Mansfield

White! he turned as white as a woman. ~ Katherine Mansfield

You have only to say one word and I would know your voice among all other voices. I don't know what is it- I've often wondered - that makes your voice such a - haunting memory... Do you remember that first afternoon we spent together at Kew Gardens? You were so surprised because I did not know the names of any flowers. I am still just as ignorant for all your telling me. But whenever it is very fine and warm, and I see some bright colours - it's awfully strange - I hear you voice saying: "Geranium, marigold, and verbena." And I feel those three words are all I recall of some forgotten, heavenly language... You remember that afternoon? ~ Katherine Mansfield

Children are unaccountable little creatures. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Last night, there was a moment before you got into bed. You stood, quite naked, bending forward a little - talking. It was only for an instant. I saw you - I loved you so - loved your body with such tenderness - Ah my dear - And I am not thinking now of 'passion.' No, of that other thing that makes me feel that every inch of you is so precious to me. Your soft shoulders - your creamy warm skin, your ears, cold like shells are cold - your long legs and your feet that I love to clasp with my feet - the feeling of your belly - & your thin young back - Just below that bone that sticks out at the back of your neck you have a little mole. It is partly because we are young that I feel this tenderness - I love your youth - I could not bear that it should be touched even by a cold wind if I were the Lord. ~ Katherine Mansfield

... always with that magical child air about her, that delightful sense of perpetually attending a party. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I love this place; I love mountains and big skies and forests. And the weather is still supremely beautiful even though the lower peaks are powdered with fresh snow. But Heavens! What sun. It never has an ending. I am basking at this minute - half past four - too hot without a hat, & the sky is that transparent blue only to be seen in autumn - the forest trees steeped in light. ~ Katherine Mansfield

It's rather nice to think of oneself as a sailor bending over the map of one's mind and deciding where to go and how to go. The great thing to remember is we can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. ~ Katherine Mansfield

She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Beauties" by Anton Chekhov, "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J. D. Salinger, "Brownies" or "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" both by ZZ Packer, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel, "Fat" by Raymond Carver, "Indian Camp ~ Gabrielle Zevin

Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at - nothing - at nothing, simply. ~ Katherine Mansfield

The truth is friendship is every bit as sacred and eternal as marriage. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Perhaps it does not matter so very much what it is one loves in this world. But love something one must. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I think of you often. Especially in the evenings, when I am on the balcony and it's too dark to write or to do anything but wait for the stars. A time I love. One feels half disembodied, sitting like a shadow at the door of one's being while the dark tide rises. Then comes the moon, marvellously serene, and small stars, very merry for some reason of their own. It is so easy to forget, in a worldly life, to attend to these miracles. ~ Katherine Mansfield

We might be fifty, we might be five,
So snug, so compact, so wise are we!
Under the kitchen-table leg
My knee is pressing against his knee. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Delighted of course. It will only be a very scratch meal - just the sandwich crusts and broken meringue-shells and what's left over. Yes, isn't it a perfect morning? ~ Katherine Mansfield

September is different from all other months. It is more magical. I feel the strange chemical change in the earth which produces mushrooms is the cause, too, of the extra 'life' in the air - a resilience, a sparkle. ~ Katherine Mansfield

When I say "I fear" - don't let it disturb you, dearest heart. We all fear when we are in waiting-rooms. Yet we must pass beyond them, and if the other can keep calm, it is all the help we can give each other. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Ellen, not for the wide world! But while she said it, madam - I was looking in her glass; of course, she didn't know I could see her - she put her little hand on her heart just like her dear mother used to, and lifted her eyes ... Oh, madam! ~ Katherine Mansfield

There were all her feelings for him, sharp and defined, one as true as the other. And there was the other, this hatred, just as real as the rest. She could have done her feelings up in little packets and given them to Stanley. She longed to hand him that last one, for a surprise. She could see his eyes as he opened that... ~ Katherine Mansfield

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. That is the mystery. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Leila was sure ifhe partner didn't come and she had to listen to that marvellous music and to watch the others sliding, gliding over the golden floor, she would die at least, or faint, or lift her arms and fly out of one of those dark windows that showed the stars. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That's no matter.) But warm, eager, living life - to be rooted in life - to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Laura's upbringing made her wonder for a moment whether it was quite respectful of a workman to talk to her of bangs slap in the eye. But she did quite follow him. ~ Katherine Mansfield

In the shortest sea voyage there is no sense of time. You have been down in the cabin for hours or days or years. Nobody knows or cares. You know all the people to the point of indifference. You do not believe in dry land any more - you are caught in the pendulum itself, and left there, idly swinging. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Hail, brother! All hail, Thou Mighty One!" A velvety bass voice came booming over the water. Great ~ Katherine Mansfield

No, madam, never now. Of course, I did think of it at one time. But it wasn't to be. He had a little flower-shop just down ~ Katherine Mansfield

If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Short stories can be like photographs, catching people at some moment in their lives and trapping the memory for ever . There they are, smiling or frowning, looking sad, happy, serious, surprised ... And behind those smiles and those frowns lie all the experience of life, the fears and delights, the hopes and the dreams ~ Katherine Mansfield

turned away, took out his cigarette case, but remembering how the ~ Katherine Mansfield

It is, after all, that old process which Katherine Mansfield once described as 'going out and looking at a tree and coming back plus the tree. ~ Padma Hejmadi

My love for you tonight is so deep and tender that it seems to be outside myself as well. ~ Katherine Mansfield

…I call it a November-loneliness because there is a sort of demanding stillness in my heart and it, more than ever, inflames both my mental and psychological system. November never pauses, it listlessly seems to show off, don't you think so? Or, rather, it does pause but it is always a hellish pause… ~ Katherine Mansfield

Some couples go over their budgets very carefully every month. Others just go over them. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Whatever happens I have had these blissful, perfect moments and they are worth living for. ~ Katherine Mansfield

And then there is the waiter. Not pathetic-decidedly not comic. Never making one of those perfectly insignificant remarks which amaze you so coming from a waiter (as though the poor wretch were a sort of coffee-pot and a wine bottle and not expected to hold so much as a drop of anything else). He is grey, flat-footed, and withered, with long, brittle nails that set your nerves on edge while he scrapes up your two sous. When he is not smearing over the table or flicking at a dead fly or two, he stands with one hand on the back of a chair, in his far too long apron, and over his other arm the three-cornered dip of dirty napkin, waiting to be photographed in connexion with some wretched murder. "Interior of Café where Body was Found." You've seen him hundreds of times. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Oh dear, I sometimes think ... whatever should I do if anything were to ... But, there, thinking's no good to any one - is it, madam? ~ Katherine Mansfield

But one day we shall be rich, and the next poor. One day we shall dine in a palace and the next we'll sit in a forest and toast mushrooms on a hatpin ... ~ Katherine Mansfield

I believe that people are like portmanteaux - packed with certain things, started going, thrown about, tossed away, dumped down, lost and found, half emptied suddenly, or squeezed fatter than ever, until finally the Ultimate Porter swings them on to the Ultimate Train and away they rattle ... ~ Katherine Mansfield

Tidied all my papers. Tore up and ruthlessly destroyed much. This is always a great satisfaction. ~ Katherine Mansfield

There does seem to me something sad in life. It is hard to say what it is. I don't mean the sorrow that we all know, like illness and poverty and death. No, it is something different. It is there, deep down, deep down, part of one, like one's breathing. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I don't believe other people are ever as foolishly excited as I am while I'm working. How could they be? Writers would have to live in trees. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I could need you in many ways yet I don't; I love you in many ways. It is peculiar. I need you only in the sense that you need yourself. I don't expect anything to be mutually intense among us. I somehow like the thought of being the one who is feeling already more than one should. But I need you to believe that you are distinctively refreshing. And uncommon. And intriguing. It is an extreme oddity of mine but I need you to believe that. Call it a form of paranoia; I know that I am feeding your ego right now. Call it self-defense; I am putting in words your uniqueness in an attempt to explain to my own self why is it that I adore you. The truth is: You shine out like the sun shines out and you melt away all my intentions of a fatal, whatsoever, description regarding what is it exactly that you do. There is no exactness. See, it takes suns and miraculous imagery to slightly sketch you in words whereas you probably are as complex as an impressionist painting of impeccable quality. You continually provoke my blatantly awful poetical instincts; that is for sure. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Who is to decide between 'Let it be' and 'Force it'? ~ Katherine Mansfield

I thought how true it was that the world was a delightful place if it were not for the people, and how more than true it was that people were not worth troubling about, and that wise men should set their affections upon nothing smaller than cities, heavenly or otherwise, and countrysides which are always heavenly. ~ Katherine Mansfield

A big bee, a golden furry fellow, crept into a freesia, and the delicate flower leaned over, swung, shook; and when the bee flew away it fluttered still as though it were laughing. Happy, careless flower! ~ Katherine Mansfield

There! it had come ― the moment ― the geste! And although I was so ready, it caught me; it tumbled me over; I was simply overwhelmed. And the physical feeling was so curious, so particular. It was as if all of me, except my head and arms, all of me that was under the table, had simply dissolved, melted, turned into water. Just my head remained and two stick of arms pressing on to the table. But, ah! the agony of that moment! How can I describe it? I didn't think of anything. I didn't even cry out to myself. Just for one moment I was not. I was Agony, Agony, Agony.
Then it passed, and the very second after I was thinking: "Good God! Am I capable of feeling as strongly as that? But I was absolutely unconscious! I hadn't a phrase to meet it with! I was overcome! I was swept off my feet! I didn't even try, in the dimmest way, to put it down!"
And up I puffed and puffed, blowing off finally with: "After all I must be first-rate. No second-rate mind could have experienced such an intensity of feeling so.. purely. ~ Katherine Mansfield

I am always conscious of this secret disruption in me ~ Katherine Mansfield

Goodness gracious! - What's that? It's the clock striking! And here I've been keeping you awake. Oh, madam, you ought to have stopped me... Can I tuck in your feet? I always tuck in my lady's feet, every night, just the same. And she says, "Good night, Ellen. Sleep sound and wake early!" I don't know what I should do if she didn't say that, now. ... ~ Katherine Mansfield

A few moments later the back door of one of the bungalows opened, and a figure in a broad-striped bathing suit flung down the paddock, cleared the stile, rushed through the tussock grass into the hollow, staggered up the sandy hillock, and raced for dear life over the big porous stones, over the cold, wet pebbles, on to the hard sand that gleamed like oil. Splish-Splosh! Splish-Splosh! The water bubbled round his legs as Stanley Burnell waded out exulting. First man in as usual! He'd beaten them all again. And he swooped down to souse his head and neck. "Hail, ~ Katherine Mansfield