12 Quotes by Nancy Milford

Jack Reed, whom The New York Times had labeled "the Bolshevik agitator," hesitated and then equivocated on the stand. But by then the defense of The Masses was plain: criticism of the government didn't amount to a desire to overthrow it. If all hostile opinion were suppressed, how could Americans believe they lived in a free country? Dissent was a safeguard to freedom, not an impediment.

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

I never cry at the theatre. It seems to me that I feel things far too deeply, too deep down in my heart, to---to splash on top!

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.