List of Vera Brittain Quotes

Venice Is All Sea And Sculpture.

The Idea That It Is Necessary To Go To A University In Order To Become A Successful Writer . . . Is One Of Those Fantasies That Surround Authorship.

For A Woman As For A Man, Marriage Might Enormously Help Or Devastatingly Hinder The Growth Of Her Power To Contribute Something Impersonally Valuable To The Community In Which She Lived, But It Was Not That Power, And Could Not Be Regarded As An End In Itself. Nor, Even, Were Children Ends In Themselves; It Was Useless To Go On Producing Human Beings Merely In Order That They, In Their Sequence, Might Produce Others, And Never Turn From This Business Of Continuous Procreation To The Accomplishment Of Some Definite And Lasting Piece Of Work.

However Deep Our Devotion May Be To Parents Or To Children, It Is Our Contemporaries Alone With Whom Understanding Is Instinctive And Entire.

If The Would-be Writer Studies People In Their Everyday Lives And Discovers How To Make His Characters In Their Quieter Moods Interesting To His Readers, He Will Have Learned Far More Than He Can Ever Learn From The Constant Presentation Of Crises.

So Many People Seem To Imagine That Because The Actual Tools Of Writing Are Easily Accessible, It Is Less Difficult Than The Other Arts. This Is Entirely An Illusion.

Few Of Humanity's Characteristics Are More Disconcerting Than Its Ability To Reduce World-events To Its Own Level, Wherever This May Happen To Be.

Why, I Wonder, Do People Who At One Time Or Another Have All Been Young Themselves, And Who Ought Therefore To Know Better, Generalize So Suavely And So Mendaciously About The Golden Hours Of Youth-that Period Of Life When Every Sorrow Seems Permanent, And Every Setback Insuperable?

Belated Maternity Has Had Its Compensations; Small Children Have A Habit Of Conferring Persistent Youth Upon Their Parents, And By Their Eager Vitality Postpone The Unenterprising Cautions And Timidities Of Middle Age.

I Know Of No Place Where The Wind Can Be As Icy And The Damp So Penetrating As In Oxford Round About Easter Time.

Definite Gifts Render Their Possessors Capable Of Overcoming Any Obstacle This Side Of Death; They Create An Impetus Of Far More Genuine Value Than External Advantages In Some Other Career Where The Impulse To Make Use Of Them Remains Weak Or Non-existent. The Work That One Enjoys Is The Greatest Source Of Happiness And Vitality In Life.

Nevertheless, Hateful As Saying 'no' Always Is To An Imaginative Person, And Certain As The Offence May Be That It Will Cause To Individuals Whose Own Work Does Not Require Isolated Effort, The Writer Who Is Engaged On A Book Must Learn To Say It. He Must Say It Consistently To All Interrupters; To The Numerous Callers And Correspondents Who Want Him To Speak, Open Bazaars, See Them For 'only' Ten Minutes, Attend Literary Parties, Put People Up, Or Read, Correct And Find Publishers For Semi-literate Manuscripts By His Personal Friends.