Nancy Milford Quotes & Sayings

I am wild, if you like; but I stayed in my burrow a long, long time, - nibbling your straws and snapping at your fingers, but always just a little out of reach. Until at last I got to trust you so much that one day I ventured out for a minute, - and you threw rocks at me. And I will never come out again. — Nancy Milford

One of the first things Vincent explained to Norma was that there was a certain freedom of language in the Village that mustn't shock her. It wasn't vulgar. 'So we sat darning socks on Waverly Place and practiced the use of profanity as we stitched. Needle in, shit. Needle out, piss. Needle in, fuck. Needle out, cunt. Until we were easy with the words. — Nancy Milford

The hats were nearly all as though made by somebody who had once heard about flowers but never seen one huge muffs of horror. — Nancy Milford

He fought for his very survival. If he fought dirty sometimes that does not diminish the fact that he refused to give up. — Nancy Milford

Life is impermanent and in the face of that impermanence, cavort! Look death in the eye, tell him you're as cute as a button, flash a little deviant guile his way, and tell him to go feast on somebody's else's sweet flesh. — Nancy Milford

I was in love with a whirlwind and I must spin a net big enough to catch it, — Nancy Milford

In reality, there is no materialist like the artist, asking back from life the double and the wastage and the cost on what he puts out in emotional usury. — Nancy Milford

Zelda was a creature who overflowed with activity, radiant with desire to take from life every chance her charm, youth, and intelligence provided so abundantly. — Nancy Milford

To be a biographer is a somewhat peculiar endeavor. It seems to me it requires not only the tact, patience, and thoroughness of a scholar but the stamina of a horse. — Nancy Milford

But it was not her beauty that was arresting. It was her style, a sort of insolence toward life, her total lack of caution, her fearless and abundant pride. — Nancy Milford

It was not, Zelda wrote, prosperity or the softness of life, or any instability that marred the war generation; it was a great emotional disappointment resulting from the fact that life moved in poetic gestures when they were younger and had since settled back into buffoonery. — Nancy Milford

I hope I'll never get ambitious enough to try anything. It's so much nicer to be damned sure I could do it better than other people - and I might not could if I tried... — Nancy Milford

I had never understood quite so clearly the effective power of Jane Jacob's writing - no, her clear-headed observation - as I did reading "What We See". Maybe that's really the point of writing. That if you take the time to look, to really observe, then you see what is happening, and, with the clarity of that vision, you can act to save neighborhoods. — Nancy Milford