Gail Godwin Quotes & Sayings

There are two kinds of people. One kind, you can just tell by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves. It might be a very nice self, but you know you can expect no more suprises from it. Whereas, the other kind keep moving, changing ... They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion, they are the only people who are still alive. You must be constantly on your guard against congealing. — Gail Godwin

the remembrance of them is grievous unto us; the burden of them is intolerable. — Gail Godwin

There are things we can't undo, but perhaps there is a kind of constructive remorse that could transform regrettable acts into something of service to life. — Gail Godwin

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater. — Gail Godwin

If someone had really done you an ill turn and later came to you and said, "I am truly sorry," would that mean as much to you as "the burden of it has been intolerable to me"? Remorse — Gail Godwin

The more you respect and focus on the singular and the strange, the more you become aware of the universal and infinite. — Gail Godwin

Yes, if you believed in words, if you lived by words, you had better be careful which words you say and how you say them. You had better be careful what you look up, which words, which names. Jane Clifford, in The Odd Woman — Gail Godwin

Actors between plays are like ghosts looking for bodies to inhabit. — Gail Godwin

Dreams say what they mean, but they don't say it in daytime language. — Gail Godwin

Remorse went out of fashion around the same time that "Stop feeling guilty," and "You're too hard on yourself," and "You need to love yourself more" came into fashion. — Gail Godwin

One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are. — Gail Godwin

I confess, right at the start, to the doubts - and sometimes outright dreads - that go with me as I climb the stairs to my study in the morning, coffee mug in hand: I have to admit to the habitual apprehension mixed with a sort of reverence, as I light the incense ... and wonder: what is going to happen today? Will anything happen? Will the angel come today? — Gail Godwin

Some things arrive in their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever. — Gail Godwin

The best antidote I have found is to yearn for something. As long as you yearn, you can't congeal: There is a forward motion to yearning. — Gail Godwin

During the act of writing I have told myself something that I didn't know I knew. — Gail Godwin

I work continuously within the shadow of failure. For every novel that makes it to my publisher's desk, there are at least five or six that died on the way. And even with the ones I do finish, I think of all the ways they might have been better. — Gail Godwin

I read constantly. If I don't have a good book, I'm beside myself. — Gail Godwin

Hope does not necessarily have to take an object ... — Gail Godwin

I'm not sure I know what 'simple-hearted' means," I said haughtily. "When there's no deceit or malice in your heart. Most of us have some; it protects us. People without it are rare. — Gail Godwin

Then he laughed, his typical laugh. Making me wish i had ten more such anectodes stashed away to keep him standing there, holding onto me and laughing. — Gail Godwin

General Confession it had been watered down to we are truly sorry and we humbly repent. — Gail Godwin

Squashed behind The Cloud of Unknowing we discovered a pocket-size spiral notebook with a day-by-day account of the time Justin had stayed with her and her husband after Tommy's death. The writing was legible though it required effort (this was before she took her calligraphy course), but Justin was ecstatic and asked if he could have the little notebook. "This is my history," he said. Later, after he had deciphered every last word: "Boy, was I loved. — Gail Godwin

The race of children possesses magically sagacious powers. — Gail Godwin

Other people don't exist when you're not with them. — Gail Godwin

As a teacher, Kurt Vonnegut was easy, magnanimous. He didn't try to make his students into little Kurt Vonneguts. He respected material unlike his own and was startlingly humble about what he did. ("I write with a big black crayon," he would write to me later, "while you're more of an impressionist. I don't think you have it in you to be crude.") In his workshop sessions, things always seemed a little looser, a little kinder, a little funnier. — Gail Godwin

The future arches above us all like a giant question mark, looming or embracing by whims and turns. — Gail Godwin

The act of longing for something will always be more intense than the requiting of it. — Gail Godwin

I believe that dreams transport us through the underside of our days, and that if we wish to become acquainted with the dark side of what we are, the signposts are there, waiting for us to translate them. — Gail Godwin

One of the notebooks was for musings and pep talks. ... The other notebooks were for writing out the novel the way authors had done for centuries. — Gail Godwin

But the son whips out a Bayer aspirin, the father rises to his feet, embraces the son, and Technicolor is restored to their lives. — Gail Godwin

Much of the activity we think of as writing is, actually, getting ready to write. — Gail Godwin

When I was in seminary," Father Edward had told other guests around the table when he was purchasing his books, "my spiritual director told me not to read theology. 'Read novels,' he said, and I have. — Gail Godwin

At times ... one is downright thankful for the self-absorption of other people. — Gail Godwin

Learning when 'enough is enough' is the discipline of a lifetime. — Gail Godwin

Heroics are not easily had for the young in our times. Perhaps that is why they go to such extremes to create their own dangers. — Gail Godwin

The characters that I create are parts of myself and I send them on little missions to find out what I don't know yet. — Gail Godwin

None of us suddenly becomes something overnight. The preparations have been in the making for lifetime. — Gail Godwin

If there is such a thing as sin in this world, I think it must be shutting oneself up against hope. — Gail Godwin

I believe that with enough practice and good faith, you can learn to recognize when the work is achieved. — Gail Godwin

How easy it was to make people happy, when you didn't want or need anything from them. — Gail Godwin

A person always has control over how she meets her adversities, and the good news is that the facing of them, one after another, year after year, builds an inner strength that nobody can take away from you. — Gail Godwin

She was her steady self again, the one about whom Nonie had said, I admire that woman. Despite all her adversities, Beryl Jones manages to stay in control her days. — Gail Godwin

Negative people present us with an accelereted personal growth opportunity. — Gail Godwin

Life is a disease ... — Gail Godwin