Best 31 quotes of Gail Godwin on MyQuotes

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

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

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

I'm always aware that I risk being taken for a neurasthenic prima donna when I explain to someone who wants 'just a little' of my time that five minutes of the wrong kind of distraction can ruin a working day.

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

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.

Learning when 'enough is enough' is the discipline of a lifetime.

Life is a disease.

Negative people present us with an accelereted personal growth opportunity.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 surprises 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.

What did a few ripples in the flesh matter when, all too soon, now or later, that flesh would be making its return journey to dust?

Who wanted to creep along in comfort when there was one chance in a thousand of flying?

You're supposed to get tired planting bulbs. But it's an agreeable tiredness.

How glibly and thoughtlessly that phrase ‘make us grow’ slides off our tongues. As if growth were always a happy, shapely matter: leaves unfurling, blossoms opening, hearts and minds joyously stretching toward more light. Whereas the fact of the matter was, when we asked for growth, we were asking for a mess. Exploding tempers, privately nursed little petri dishes of resentments, insecure stumblings into dangerous new places.

It was more like I saw him coming and knew he was the one. I went out of myself to meet him and then couldn’t get back inside without bringing him with me.

May their having each other make more of them both.

Not everybody gets to grow up. First you have to survive your childhood, and then begins the hard work of growing into it.

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.

When someone has enough money, logistics can be worked out in no time.