All Wallace Stegner Quotes
- Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting?... Do… All
- In a way, it is beautiful to be young and hard up. With the right wife, and I had her, deprivation became a game. Beautiful
- He used to tell me, 'Do what you like to do. It'll probably turn out to be what you do best. Best
- We made plenty of mistakes, but we never tripped anybody to gain an advantage, or took illegal shortcuts when no judge was around. We have… Advantage
- It is almost impossible to write fiction about the Mormons, for the reason that Mormon institutions and Mormon society are so peculiar that they call… Almost Impossible
- Wisdom. . .is knowing what you have to accept. Accept
- Faith can reclaim deserts as well as move mountains. Desert
- One cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native home of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the… Achieved
- We write to make sense of it all. All
- Salt is added to dried rose petals with the perfume and spices, when we store them away in covered jars, the summers of our past. Added
- Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin… Air
- You married me...but you didn't marry what you could make out of me. Funny
- Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are… Accidental
- Civilizations grow by agreements and accomodations and accretions, not by repudiations. The rebels and the revolutionaries are only eddies, they keep the stream from getting… Absorbed
- 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… Anybody
- Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality. Ahead
- Youth hasn't got anything to do with chronological age. It's times of hope and happiness. Age
- We are fossils in the making. Fossils
- Be proud of every scar on your heart, each one holds a lifetime’s worth of lessons. Each
- wherever you find the greatest good, you will find the greatest evil, because evil loves paradise as much as good. Evil
- The perfect weather of Indian Summer lengthened and lingered, warm sunny days were followed by brisk nights with Halloween a presentiment in the air. Air
- I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely… Absolutely
- It's easier to die than to move ... at least for the Other Side you don't need trunks. Die
- [T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air ... Another… Air
- You can't retire to weakness -- you've got to learn to control strength. Control