278 Quotes by Wallace Stegner

But we all hoped, in whatever way our capacities permitted, to define and illustrate the worthy life. With me it was always to be done in words; Sid too, though with less confidence. With Sally it was sympathy, human understanding, a tenderness toward human cussedness or frailty. And with Charity it was organization, order, action, assistance to the uncertain, and direction to the wavering.

Each child marked a decline in the security of their life.

Do we all buzz or ring or light up when people press our vanity buttons, and only then? Can I think of anyone in my whole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me?

Going up the path she felt that she was crying silently inside, drowning in desolate unshed tears.

Henry James says somewhere that if you have to make notes on how a thing has struck you, it probably hasn’t struck you.

If you wanted something, you planned for it, worked for it, and made it happen.

Which demonstrates our need of a sense of history : we need it to know what real injustice looked like.

I’m tired of hearing that the Lord shapes the back to the burden.

I think, don’t you, that a girl with any delicacy of feeling couldn’t bring herself to marry a man indirectly responsible for her father’s death. No matter how much she was in love with him.