Diana Athill Quotes

#1. Look! Why want anything more marvellous than what is.

Diana Athill

#2. She was an object lesson on the essential luck, whatever hardships may come their way, of those born able to make things.

Diana Athill

#3. We must always remember that we are only midwives - if we want praise for progeny we must give birth to our own.

Diana Athill

#4. My two valuable lessons are: avoid romanticism and abhor possessiveness.

Diana Athill

#5. An important aspect of the ebbing of sex was that other things became interesting. Sex obliterates the individuality of young women more often than it does that of young men, because so much more of a woman than a man is used by sex.

Diana Athill

#6. Writing shouldn't come between the reader and what's being described. It should be as transparent as possible.

Diana Athill

#7. I am not sure that digging in our past guilts is a useful occupation for the very old, given that one can do so little about them. I have reached a stage at which one hopes to be forgiven for concentrating on how to get through the present.

Diana Athill

#8. Generally office and home were far apart, and home was much more important than office. I was not ashamed of valuing my private life more highly than my work; that, to my mind, is what everyone ought to do.

Diana Athill

#9. I have heard people bewailing man's landing on the moon, as though before it was touched by an astronaut's foot it was made of silver or mother-of-pearl, and that footprint turned it into gray dust. But the moon never was made of mother-of-pearl, and it still shines as if it were so made.

Diana Athill

#10. Read it aloud to yourself because that's the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK.

Diana Athill

#11. It was like removing layers of crumpled brown paper from an awkwardly shaped parcel, and revealing the attractive present which it contained.

Diana Athill