Margaret Anderson Quotes & Sayings

Life for me has been exactly what I thought it would be, a cake, which I have eaten and had too. — Margaret Anderson

As I look at the human story I see two stories. They run parallel and never meet. One is of people who live, as they can or must, the events that arrive; the other is of people who live, as they intend, the events they create. — Margaret Anderson

Self-preservation is the first responsibility. — Margaret Anderson

I was as repelled by the French as I was attracted by their country. — Margaret Anderson

I have always fought for ideas - until I learned that it isn't ideas but grief, struggle, and flashes of vision which enlighten. — Margaret Anderson

Intellectuals are too sentimental for me. — Margaret Anderson

It is rarely that you see an American writer who is not hopelessly sane. — Margaret Anderson

Paris is the city in which one loves to live. Sometimes I think this is because it is the only city in the world where you can step out of a railway station - the Gare D'Orsay - and see, simultaneously, the chief enchantments: the Seine with its bridges and bookstalls, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Tuileries Gardens, the Place de la Concorde, the beginning of the Champs Elysees - nearly everything except the Luxembourg Gardens and the Palais Royal. But what other city offers as much as you leave a train? — Margaret Anderson

I believe in the unsubmissive, the unfaltering, the unassailable, the irresistible, the unbelievable - in other words, in an art of life. — Margaret Anderson

This is the most beautiful thing we'll ever have to publish. Let us print it if it's the last effort of our lives!

-on publishing Ulysses — Margaret Anderson

My greatest enemy is reality. I have fought it successfully for thirty years. — Margaret Anderson

I defied nothing at all. I ignored the law because I didn't know it existed. It didn't occur to me that anyone would want to curb my inspiration. — Margaret Anderson