23 Quotes by Josephine Humphreys

She knew what she looked like – someone at the edge of catastrophe, someone already flinching from a blow that had not yet been delivered.

He longed for a heart like the one his friend was getting, an unstoppable pump that would not falter. Danny might appear to be in trouble, but he never really is, he has this secret strength. Now, though he’s lost fifty thousand dollars in a golf-course scheme and his ex-wife is suing him and he lives without furniture, these are minor details. The man is complete. Self-destructive to some extent, but whole enough to take it.

People Should not be protected from the world... -It cripples them.

Growing up in an old city, you learn history’s one true lesson: that history fades. Nothing sticks together for very long without immense effort. His own strong house is in a constant process of disintegration. He calls workmen to come repair the roof, paint the porches, replace sills; but even this work has no permanence, it will have to be done again in four or five years. Is this noble activity for a man? Patching, gluing, temporizing, begging for time?

Why do philosophers in the South so often end as newspapermen, poets as doctors? Maybe they crave what’s found in pain and loss: a sense of living among other human beings. They’ll give up dreams for that.