Marta Gellhorn Quotes

It is much harder to be lonely, when you have for a while stopped being lonely. I was used to having only myself, cold and hard as that is; I could live with it. And now I wait, for a voice, a face, a body, that is not going to be here, is not mine, does not in any case wait as I do, nor share this homesickness. […] How to explain that I taught myself to be tough and indifferent, because it mattered too much and learned not even to weep in my mind not to notice. ~ Martha Gellhorn

What the trees can do handsomely-greening and flowering, fading and then the falling of leaves-human beings cannot do with dignity, let alone without pain. ~ Martha Gellhorn

I see mysteries and complications wherever I look, and I have never met a steadily logical person. ~ Martha Gellhorn

It's easier to find out who someone isn't than who they are ~ Marta Perry

As an accountant by trade, my work for blue chip companies took me all over the world. ~ Marta Andreasen

To be completely honest, I didn't want to compete with myself. I wanted to reinvent myself. This seemed like the perfect way to step back in without competing with what I've already done, because I can't win that battle. ~ Marta Kauffman

Who are we without our memories? ~ Marta Acosta

Sunshine and Shadows...That is also the pattern of our lives, ain't so? We have the gut things and the sad, one after another, but all part of who we are ~ Marta Perry

The private conscience is the last and only protection of the civilized world. ~ Martha Gellhorn

Tell me something in your native woodland language. ~ Marta Acosta

Things you dislike and want to be detached might follow you one day. ~ Marta Abebe

[On Paris:] I do not know any city so beautiful and you can be unhappy there and notice your unhappiness less, having the city to look at. ~ Martha Gellhorn

America has made no reparation to the Vietnamese, nothing. We are the richest people in the world and they are among the poorest. We savaged them, though they had never hurt us, and we cannot find it in our hearts, our honor, to give them help-because the government of Vietnam is Communist. And perhaps because they won. ~ Martha Gellhorn

Jesus came to be the light for the world, and then there's the Christmas star and the idea of letting your light shine...But not blinding your neighbor with it. ~ Marta Perry

The ride through the ancient walled town of Maienfeld, past vineyards and gently rolling fields and then up, up to where the snow still lay deep in the purple shadows underneath the fir trees, was an experience which called for silence. Glancing back, Heidi saw that Marta was no longer paying any attention to the chickens. She had lifted her face to the glorious mountains with their glistening peaks and awe-inspiring glaciers. Of what was she thinking? Did they thrill this little stranger as they had always thrilled her? Would she, too, learn to love them? ~ Charles Tritten

Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit. ~ Martha Gellhorn

We don't necessarily need to know each other's name, age, profession, drug of choice, childhood trauma or recent tragedy to understand what pain feels like and offer comfort. We are strangers drawn together by a shared desire for lasting peace. ~ Marta Mrotek

By its existence, the Peace Movement denies that governments know best; it stands for a different order of priorities: the human race comes first. ~ Martha Gellhorn

In the end, in England, when you want to find out how people are feeling, you always go to the pubs. ~ Martha Gellhorn

Television is a very intimate experience. It's in your home, you watch it in your PJs and while you're folding towels. ~ Marta Kauffman

Perhaps these men in the House Caucus Room [Committee on Un-American Activities] are determined to spread silence: to frighten those voices which will shout no, and ask questions, defend the few, attack cruelty and proclaim the rights and dignity of man ... America is going to look very strange to Americans and they will not be at home here, for the air will slowly become unbreathable to all forms of life except sheep. ~ Martha Gellhorn

My kind of loneliness now has no cure, you know; it is something I expect to live with until I die. Friends are heavenly kind, sometimes fun; it would be fatal not to have them. But I by no means need or want daily contact; perhaps it takes as much out of me as it gives, perhaps takes more. ~ Martha Gellhorn

I found out about the Spanish war because I was in Germany when it began. ~ Martha Gellhorn

What gave these krauts a right to say who should be born and who shouldn't, and who could live and be let alone, and who would get caught and killed? ~ Martha Gellhorn

I was once in a bar with a friend of mine, we were having a drink and a bunch of people walked in and they were talking about how, "It's official, there's going to be a 'Friends' reunion," and I'm sitting there with my friend going, "No, no, there's not." ~ Marta Kauffman

Too bad we were interrupted by Captain-brainless-bod and his trusty sidekick, Jenny-from-the-cockblock. Talk about bad timing. ~ Marta Brown

When we are young we cannot know
what it is like to bigger grow
but why do grown-ups great and tall
so soon forget they once were small. ~ Marta Moran Bishop

In November you begin to know how long the winter will be. ~ Martha Gellhorn

La cuestion esta en decidirse en algo, alguna vez.

The gist is in deciding on something, at some time. ~ Marta Traba

But now that the guerrilla fighting is over, the Spaniards are again men without a country or families or homes or work, though everyone appreciates very much what they did. ~ Martha Gellhorn

If there is a war, then all of the things most of us do won't matter any more. I have a feeling that one has to work all day and all night and live too, and swim and get the sun one's hair and laugh and love as many people as one can find around and do this all terribly fast, because the time getting shorter and shorter every day. ~ Martha Gellhorn

We stare at each other pop-eyed over the burlap sack and laugh as if we're afraid to stop. Somebody needs to say the magical, abracadabrical words that will turn tonight's crime into a joke. Marta has buttoned her wet sweater up to her neck. Petey's vanished. Now Raffy swirls the flashlights with true panic. Our joke keeps hatching and waddling forward in a snaky black procession, growing longer and less funny by the second, and this time nobody, not even Raffy, knows the punch line. ~ Karen Russell

Here one has the perfect example of justice: the men have kept their women enslaved ... stupid and limited and apart, for their male vanity and power; result: the dull women bore the daylights out of the men. ~ Martha Gellhorn

I've become a real housewife. Terry doesn't mind me working, in fact he loves me to be independent. But I only get an allowance of $15 dollars a week, which doesn't go very far. ~ Marta Kristen

Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival. ~ Martha Gellhorn

Joseph McCarthy, the Junior Republican Senator from Wisconsin, ruled America like devil king for four years. His purges were an American mirror image of Stalin's purges, an unnoticed similarity. ~ Martha Gellhorn

Dachau has been my own lifelong point of no return. Between the moment when I walked through the gate of that prison, with its infamous motto, 'Arbeit Macht Frei,' and when I walked out at the end of a day that had no ordinary scale of hours, I was changed, and how I looked at the human condition, the world we live in, changed ... Years of war had taught me a great deal, but war was nothing like Dachau. Compared to Dachau, war was clean. ~ Martha Gellhorn

I do not see myself as a footnote to someone else's life. ~ Martha Gellhorn

In all things there is beauty. In the glint of dew clinging to the strands of a spider's web; in the way the setting sun winks off shards of broken glass; in the rainbow forming in the soap suds in a sink full of dirty dishes; in a blade of grass which manages to force its way, with patience and time, through the all too willing grasp of sidewalk cement. It is in the faded brown of leaves, turning, twisting against their fate, as they fall to the ground, light and dry as brittle bones, and in the bare, thin-tipped branches, denuded by a change in season. It is in the way a stranger's laughter cradles you if you let it. It is in the intricate scars of a lover's back and in our upturned eyes when we ask for forgiveness. ~ Marta Curti

... none had been outside Russia. I kept trying to remember something that I had read about a species of fish that was born, lived, spawned, died in the dark waters of a cave; and were blind. ~ Martha Gellhorn

Terry's mother worked in the film industry for many years. She always wanted him to marry an actress. ~ Marta Kristen

I only knew about daily life. It was said, well, it isn't everybody's daily life. That is why I started. ~ Martha Gellhorn

You know, I've always hated those stories about princes and princesses with some extraordinary ability, special because they're born special.'
'Like me?' He smiled wickedly, making me laugh a little.
'I didn't see how those were happy stories, because life has given princes and princesses enough unearned advantages. I'd rather believe that anyone can accomplish remarkable things when she really tries. Maybe her accomplishments will never be recognized, but simply loving and caring for someone else, that's miraculous to me. ~ Marta Acosta

The old saying is true enough. The hurrier I go, the behinder I get. ~ Marta Perry

Oh, Heidi! Heidi!" Marta exclaimed at last. "This is your garden. I know it even though you have not told me. Do you suppose in Heaven it is any more beautiful than this?"
"I sometimes think that Heaven is all around us, if we only have eyes to see it," Heidi said softly.
"And on the Alm too?" questioned Marta.
"Yes, and in Dorfli. Even in the chateau which seems so gloomy now. There must be a little Heaven there as well. And if not, Marta, why not make it so? ~ Charles Tritten

Spring is that wonderful if somewhat delusional time for a gardener when the sap rises and everything seems possible. ~ Marta McDowell

Once you get a tyranny, you don't easily get rid of it. Much better to remember about eternal vigilance. ~ Martha Gellhorn

I do not hope for a world at peace, all of it, all the time. I do not believe in the perfectibility of man, which is what would be required for world peace; I only believe in the human race. I believe the human race must continue. ~ Martha Gellhorn