“Words are shallow troughs for the deep water of the mind and it is only the fierce, the living, the simple, the clear, the angry mind which can overflow the troughs and go out over the mud, and over the grass, bearing the light of the sun on it like an angry shield.” Words Have PowerWords Of Revelation Book:Words That Must Somehow Be Said: Selected Essays, 1927-1984 Source: Words That Must Somehow Be Said: Selected Essays, 1927-1984
“Collecting statistics at camp Zachary Taylor after the armistice [WW1 1918], I found that out of two hundred and fifty men from Kentucky and Tennessee, ninety were completely illiterate, several were actual imbeciles, two had syphilitic rheumatism; and any number had married at childhood ages, from twelve - the youngest - to seventeen. They had married girls from nine - the youngest - to fourteen. So I am ready to believe that the Faulkner and Caldwell depictions of ingrown sections of the country are based upon actual conditions....” Southern CultureFaulknerCaldwellImbecilese Book:Being geniuses together, 1920-1930 Source: Being geniuses together, 1920-1930
“Writing of a chance early meeting with Dylan Thomas in a London bar, Kay Boyle writes (1955, in the era of McCarthyism, 1947-1956): Perhaps because he [Dylan Thomas was so often out of place among men, we take him now as symbol. Perhaps because we who write in America are in great difficulties now, we cherish Dylan Thomas as if he were our own ego, our own wild soul freed of the flesh. An American critic, writing of the American literary scene, points out that thinking Americans, in this period of our nation's development, are deeply troubled because "the demands for national security and for individual freedom" are in conflict.” FreedomWritersNational SecurityMccarthyismDylan Thomas Book:Words That Must Somehow Be Said: Selected Essays, 1927-1984 Source: Words That Must Somehow Be Said: Selected Essays, 1927-1984
“I heard the military bands playing with false and terrible cheer in the streets as the recruits went off to war [WW1]. I had beat the bed with my fists then, and cried tears of rage that young men must march off to this artful ad calculated accompaniment to places where wagon roads would be laid across their bones.” WarFutility Of WarYoung Men DyingWar Music Book:Being geniuses together, 1920-1930 Source: Being geniuses together, 1920-1930
“Drink was the most fearsome of deceivers ... for it promised one thing and came through with quite another.” One ThingDrinkDrinkingAlcoholismDeceiver Author:Kay Boyle
“Because of my mother, who gave me definitions, I knew what I was committed to in life. ... I had the most satisfactory of childhoods because Mother, small, delicate-boned, witty, and articulate, turned out to be exactly my age.” AgeMotherChildhoodDefinitionsCommittedWittyDelicate Author:Kay Boyle
“whatever devotion to something else there was in him had been made impure by church taken as a weekly, dutiful thing.” MadeReligionChurchTakenDevotion Book:Life Being the Best & Other Stories Source: Life Being the Best & Other Stories
“Springtime is a season we tend to forget as we grow older, and yet far back in our memories, like the landscape of a country visited long ago, it's always there.” LongCountryGrowsMemoriesForgetSpringSeasonsLandscapeLong AgoOur MemoriesSpringtime Author:Kay Boyle
“Ah, trouble, trouble, there are the two different kinds ... there's the one you give and the other you take.” GivingKindTwoDifferentTroubleDifferent Kinds Author:Kay Boyle
“The decision to speak out is the vocation and lifelong peril by which the intellectual must live.” SpeakDecisionAcceptanceIntellectualVocationPerilLifelongSpeaks Out Author:Kay Boyle
“Your body is a jewel box.....the jewel is your soul” SoulBodyBoxesYour BodyYour SoulJewels Author:Kay Boyle
“You can reconstruct the picture from chaos and memory's ruins.” MemoriesChaosRuinsReconstruction Author:Kay Boyle
“There is only one history of any importance, and it is the history of what you once believed in, and the history of what you came to believe in.” InspirationalBelieveImportance Book:Fifty Stories Source: Fifty Stories
“I happen to like household chores and resent them only when performing them makes it difficult for me to fulfill my professional duties.” HappensDifficultDutyDifficultyPerformingHouseholdResentChoresHousehold Chores Author:Kay Boyle