278 Quotes by Wallace Stegner

I tell him I am proud of his genius for construction, but he says he has no genius for anything, he just never knows when he is beaten.

We are strange creatures, and writers are stranger creatures than most.

You’ll do what you think you want to do, or what you think you ought to do. If you’re very lucky, luckier than anybody I know, the two will coincide.

Actually he never expected much of people, and so he wasn’t upset if they turned out to be shysters or chiselers or crooks. But a few people he trusted absolutely. It was when they betrayed him that he turned to rock.

For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone.

The best thing we have learned from nearly five hundred years of contact with the American wilderness is restraint, the willingness to hold our hand: to visit such places for our souls’ good, but leave no tracks.

It is strange to find ourselves people of consequence.

I have heard of people’s lives being changed by a dramatic or traumatic event – a death, a divorce, a winning lottery ticket, a failed exam. I never heard of anybody’s life but ours being changed by a dinner party.

Largeness is a lifelong matter. You grow because you are not content not to. You are like a beaver that chews constantly because if it doesn’t, it’s teeth grow long and lock. You grow because you are a grower; you’re large because you can’t stand to be small.