Hortense Calisher Quotes

• The words! I collected them in all shapes and sizes and hung them like bangles in my mind.

  Hortense Calisher

  Writing, Mind, Shapes

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Extreme Magic: Eight Stories and a Novella”, p.81, Open Road Media

  201 Copy quote

• Agony without genius was gaucherie.

  Hortense Calisher

  Agony, Suffering, Genius

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Mysteries of Motion: A Novel”, p.261, Open Road Media

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• if you listen too hard to the technology, your ear goes deaf to its implications.

  Hortense Calisher

  Technology, Ears, Deaf

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Mysteries of Motion: A Novel”, p.33, Open Road Media

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• When anything gets freed, a zest goes round the world.

  Hortense Calisher

  Helping Others, Zest, People

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Herself: An Autobiographical Work”, p.494, Open Road Media

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• It has always seemed to me that if you could talk about your work in fully-formed phrases, you wouldn't write it. The writing is the statement, you see, and it seems to me that the poem or the story or the novel you write is the kind of metaphor you cast on life.

  Hortense Calisher

  Writing, Phrases, Stories

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• perhaps there's no sharper spur to meditation than answered prayer.

  Hortense Calisher

  Prayer, Meditation, Spurs

  Hortense Calisher (1983). “Mysteries of motion”, Doubleday

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• Diplomacy is what is practiced after-the-fact. Never be too right too soon -- as any smart Uncle will tell you. The man who guesses what will happen will be blamed for it. No one will believe he has merely guessed.

  Hortense Calisher

  Uncles, Smart, Believe

  Hortense Calisher (1983). “Mysteries of motion”, Doubleday

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• 'Ms.' is a syllable which sounds like a bumble bee is breaking wind.

  Hortense Calisher

  Wind, Sound, Bees

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• I don't suppose there's really any critic except posterity.

  Hortense Calisher

  Critics, Posterity

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• It took most people a lifetime to join the human race.

  Hortense Calisher

  Race, People, Lifetime

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Standard Dreaming: A Novella”, p.47, Open Road Media

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• Decades go faster toward the end of a century.

  Hortense Calisher

  Time, Century, Ends

  Hortense Calisher (1983). “Mysteries of motion”, Doubleday

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• But memory, after a time, dispenses its own emphasis, making a feuilleton of what we once thought most ponderable, laying its wreath on what we never thought to recall.

  Hortense Calisher

  Memories, Wreaths, Emphasis

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “In the Absence of Angels: Stories”, p.88, Open Road Media

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• Sociology, the guilty science, functions best by alarm.

  Hortense Calisher

  Science, Alarms, Guilty

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• The young show the genetic process, the old merely die of it.

  Hortense Calisher

  Process, Young, Shows

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Standard Dreaming: A Novella”, p.48, Open Road Media

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• The standard dreaming of a society has to be listened to.

  Hortense Calisher

  Dream, Standards

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Standard Dreaming: A Novella”, p.43, Open Road Media

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• How clerks love refusing. It salves them for being clerks.

  Hortense Calisher

  Clerks, Bureaucracy

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Mysteries of Motion: A Novel”, p.70, Open Road Media

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• Women can't travel light. We're in charge of the basic facts.

  Hortense Calisher

  Travel, Light, Facts

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• I get up and I have coffee and I speak to no man and I go to my desk.

  Hortense Calisher

  Coffee, Men, Speak

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• I always say that one's poetry is a solace to oneself and a nuisance to one's friends.

  Hortense Calisher

  Poetry, Nuisance, Solace

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher”, p.629, Open Road Media

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• In a family, the same spoken lines come in over and over. Intimacy exhausts.

  Hortense Calisher

  Family, Lines, Intimacy

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “On Keeping Women: A Novel”, p.264, Open Road Media

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• But the trek that starts with the feet always rises in time to the head. There had never been any of mankind's that didn't.

  Hortense Calisher

  Travel, Feet, Mankind

  Hortense Calisher (1983). “Mysteries of motion”, Doubleday

  4 Copy quote

• The novel is rescued life.

  Hortense Calisher

  Novel

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Herself: An Autobiographical Work”, p.434, Open Road Media

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• Speech isn't for agony.

  Hortense Calisher

  Agony, Suffering, Speech

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Standard Dreaming: A Novella”, p.76, Open Road Media

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• This is my answer to the gap between ideas and action - I will write it out.

  Hortense Calisher

  Success, Writing, Ideas

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Herself: An Autobiographical Work”, p.62, Open Road Media

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• Every art is a church without communicants, presided over by a parish of the respectable. An artist is born kneeling; he fights to stand. A critic, by nature of the judgment seat, is born sitting.

  Hortense Calisher

  Art, Fighting, Church

  Hortense Calisher (2013). “Herself: An Autobiographical Work”, p.343, Open Road Media

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