Quotessence
Home / Authors / Wallace Stegner
Wallace Stegner

Wallace Stegner Quotes

Historian

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsPeopleWritingThinkingKnowsWantWildernessNeedsWayWestAirCharacterGreenHas BeensHomeLeftLifeLittlesMightPast

Famous Wallace Stegner Quotes

“I am terribly glad to be alive; and when I have wit enough to think about it, terribly proud to be a man and an American, with all the rights and privileges that those words connote; and most of all I am humble before the responsibilities that are also mine. For no right comes without a responsibility, and being born luckier than most of the world's millions, I am also born more obligated.”

ThinkingMenWorldEnoughBornResponsibilityMillionsAliveRightsMinesProudPrivilegeHumbleWitGladBe A ManRights And PrivilegesGlad To Be Alive
Book:Stealing Glances: Three Interviews with Wallace Stegner
Create image

“I imagine you will always be pinched for money, for time, for a place to work. But I think you will do it. And believe me, it is not a new problem. You are in good company...Your touch is the uncommon touch; you will speak only to the thoughtful reader. And more times than once you will ask yourself whether such readers really exist at all and why you should go on projecting your words into silence like an old crazy actor playing the part of himself to an empty theater.”

ThinkingShouldBelieveProblemActorsAsksSpeakSilenceCompanyImagineCrazyGoes OnReaderEmptyTheaterThoughtfulMore TimeBelieve In MeUncommonGood Company
Author:Wallace Stegner
Create image

“If there is such a thing as being conditioned by climate and geography, and I think there is, it is the West that has conditioned me. It has the forms and lights and colors that I respond to in nature and in art. If there is a western speech, I speak it; if there is a western character or personality, I am some variant of it; if there is a western culture in the small-c , anthropological sense, I have not escaped it. It has to have shaped me. I may even have contributed to it in minor ways, for culture is a pyramid to which each of us brings a stone.”

IfsThinkingWayMayArtCharacterLightFormCultureSpeakColorPersonalitySpeechStonesWestClimateWesternMinorsGeographyPyramidsWestern CultureLight And Color
Book:The American West as Living Space
Create image

“Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers. If they arrive at college with literary ambitions, they should be told that everything they have done since their first childhood poems, printed in the school paper, has been preparation for entering a long, long apprenticeship.”

IfsThinkingShouldWritingFirstsLongHas BeensDoneSchoolYoungChildhoodCollegePaperAmbitionPreparationEnteringDiscouragedPrintedBe EncouragedYoung WritersApprenticeship
Author:Wallace Stegner
Create image