Top 100 Quotes About Katherine Mansfield
#1. Beauties" by Anton Chekhov, "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J. D. Salinger, "Brownies" or "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" both by ZZ Packer, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel, "Fat" by Raymond Carver, "Indian Camp
Gabrielle Zevin
#2. It is, after all, that old process which Katherine Mansfield once described as 'going out and looking at a tree and coming back plus the tree.
Padma Hejmadi
#3. The ostrich burying its head in the sand does at any rate wish to convey the impression that its head is the most important part of it.
Katherine Mansfield
#4. The Samuel Josephs were not a family. They were a swarm. The moment you entered the house they cropped up and jumped out at you from under the tables, through the stair rails, behind the doors, behind the coats in the passage. Impossible to count them: impossible to distinguish between them.
Katherine Mansfield
#7. Mrs. Stubbs, and she pointed dramatically to the life-size head and shoulders of a burly man with a dead white rose in the buttonhole of his coat that made you think of a curl of cold mutting fat. Just below, in silver
Katherine Mansfield
#8. I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship, was that one had to explain nothing
Katherine Mansfield
#9. I love to close my eyes a moment and think of the land outside, white under the mingled snow and moonlight--the heaps of stones by the roadside white--snow in the furrows. Mon Dieu! How quiet and how patient!
Katherine Mansfield
#10. How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you - you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences - like rags and shreds of your very life.
Katherine Mansfield
#11. There is no feeling to be compared with the feeling of having written and finished a story.
Katherine Mansfield
#13. Delighted of course. It will only be a very scratch meal - just the sandwich crusts and broken meringue-shells and what's left over. Yes, isn't it a perfect morning?
Katherine Mansfield
#15. Tidied all my papers. Tore up and ruthlessly destroyed much. This is always a great satisfaction.
Katherine Mansfield
#16. I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope that I can ask you to share my future plusses.
Katherine Mansfield
#17. Isn't life,' she stammered, 'isn't life
' But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood.
'Isn't it, darling?' said Laurie.
Katherine Mansfield
#19. Ma Parker stood, looking up and down. The icy wind blew out her apron into a balloon. And now it began to rain. There was nowhere.
Katherine Mansfield
#20. When she looked through the dark windows at the stars, they had long beams like wings ...
Katherine Mansfield
#21. Why! Why! Why is the middle-class so stodgy - so utterly without a sense of humor?
Katherine Mansfield
#22. Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can't I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening - where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I'd like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.
Katherine Mansfield
#23. No, she never recovered, madam. She had a stroke at the end. Last words she ever said was - very slow, "Look in - the - Look - in - " And then she was gone.
Katherine Mansfield
#26. My love for you tonight is so deep and tender that it seems to be outside myself as well.
Katherine Mansfield
#27. If one really does try to find out why it is that people don't leave each other, one discovers a mystery. It is because they can't; they are bound. And nobody on earth knows what are the bonds that bind them except those two.
Katherine Mansfield
#28. What is it with me? Am I absolutely nobody, but merely inordinately vain? I do not know ... . But I am most fearfully unhappy. That is all. I am so unhappy that I wish I was dead - yet I should be mad to die when I have not yet lived at all.
Katherine Mansfield
#29. I love the night. I love to feel the tide of darkness rising, slowly and slowly washing, turning over and over, lifting, floating, all that lies strewn upon the dark beach, all that lies hid in rocky hollows.
Katherine Mansfield
#30. Everything about her was sweet, pale like honey. You would not have been surprised to see a bee caught in the tangles of that yellow hair.
Katherine Mansfield
#31. It is true when you are by yourself and you think about life, it is always sad. All that excitement and so on has a way of suddenly leaving you, and it's as though, in the silence, somebody called your name, and you heard your name for the first time.
Katherine Mansfield
#32. I believe that people are like portmanteaux - packed with certain things, started going, thrown about, tossed away, dumped down, lost and found, half emptied suddenly, or squeezed fatter than ever, until finally the Ultimate Porter swings them on to the Ultimate Train and away they rattle ...
Katherine Mansfield
#33. Light as feathers the witches fly,
The horn of the moon is plain to see;
By a firefly under a jonquil flower
A goblin toasts a bumble-bee.
Katherine Mansfield
#34. What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties.
Katherine Mansfield
#35. The heavens opened for the sunset to-night. When I had thought the day folded and sealed, came a burst of heavenly bright petals.
Katherine Mansfield
#37. Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order.
Katherine Mansfield
#38. I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
Katherine Mansfield
#39. Once we have learned to read, meaning of words can somehow register without consciousness.
Katherine Mansfield
#40. Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.
Katherine Mansfield
#43. By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with ... the earth and the wonders thereof - the sea - the sun.
Katherine Mansfield
#44. Oh but I want to be a bee frightfully,' wailed Kezia... A tiny bee, all yellow-furry, with striped legs. She drew her legs up under her and leaned over the table. She felt she was a bee.
Katherine Mansfield
#45. Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people.
Katherine Mansfield
#47. I adore Life. What do all the fools matter and all the stupidity. They do matter but somehow for me they cannot touch the body of Life. Life is marvellous. I want to be deeply rooted in it - to live - to expand - to breathe in it - to rejoice - to share it. To give and to be asked for Love.
Katherine Mansfield
#48. I am a recluse at present & do nothing but write & read & read & write
Katherine Mansfield
#50. That is the fearful part of having been near death. One knows how easy it is to die. The barriers that are up for everybody else are down for you, and you've only to slip through.
Katherine Mansfield
#51. EM Forster never gets any further than warming the tea pot ... Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain't going to be no tea.
Katherine Mansfield
#52. I am going to enjoy life in Paris I know. It is so human and there is something noble in the city ... It is a real city, old and fine and life plays in it for everybody to see.
Katherine Mansfield
#53. I couldn't keep myself in, and I asked her if she'd rather I ... didn't get married.
Katherine Mansfield
#54. Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent Bay was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered hills at the back were smothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks and bungalows began.
Katherine Mansfield
#55. She had become really quite expert, she thought, at listening as though she didn't listen, at sitting in other people's lives just for a minute while they talked round her.
Katherine Mansfield
#56. Wind moving through grass so that the grass quivers. This moves me with an emotion I don't even understand.
Katherine Mansfield
#57. Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change of attitude.
Katherine Mansfield
#59. Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who are all happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.
Katherine Mansfield
#60. Oh dear, I sometimes think ... whatever should I do if anything were to ... But, there, thinking's no good to any one - is it, madam?
Katherine Mansfield
#63. In the woods where snow is thick, bars of sunlight lay like pale fire.
Katherine Mansfield
#64. Sleeping was her latest discovery. 'It's so wonderful. One simply shuts one's eyes, that's all. It's so delicious.
Katherine Mansfield
#66. Perhaps it does not matter so very much what it is one loves in this world. But love something one must.
Katherine Mansfield
#67. The English language is damned difficult, but it's also damned rich, and so clear and bright that you can search out the darkest places with it.
Katherine Mansfield
#69. There are in life as many aspects as attitudes towards it, and aspects change with attitudes.
Katherine Mansfield
#70. What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things. He was wonderful, beautiful.
Katherine Mansfield
#71. Leila was sure ifhe partner didn't come and she had to listen to that marvellous music and to watch the others sliding, gliding over the golden floor, she would die at least, or faint, or lift her arms and fly out of one of those dark windows that showed the stars.
Katherine Mansfield
#72. Oh,' said the little girl, 'my head's on your heart; I can hear it going. What a big heart you've got, father dear.
Katherine Mansfield
#73. I can never be perfectly certain whether Helen was got with child by Leonard Bast or by his fatal forgotten umbrella. All things considered, I think it must have been the umbrella.
Katherine Mansfield
#74. The truth is that every true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone - reading between the lines - has bcome the secret friend of their author.
Katherine Mansfield
#75. Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others ... Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
(Journal entry, 14 October 1922)
Katherine Mansfield
#79. Jose loved giving orders to the servants, and they loved obeying her. She always made them feel they were taking part in some drama.
Katherine Mansfield
#80. The truth is friendship is every bit as sacred and eternal as marriage.
Katherine Mansfield
#81. ... A wet night. They are going home together under an umbrella. They stop on the door to press their wet cheeks together.
Katherine Mansfield
#82. Do you feel in this letter my love for you today - It is as warm as a bird's nest.
Katherine Mansfield
#83. Now's the time when children's noses
All become as red as roses
And the colour of their faces
Makes me think of orchard places
Where the juicy apples grow,
And tomatoes in a row.
Katherine Mansfield
#84. Oh, impossible. Fancy cream puffs so soon after breakfast. The very idea made one shudder. All the same, two minutes later Jose and Laura were licking their fingers with that absorbed inward look that only comes from whipped cream.
Katherine Mansfield
#86. A big bee, a golden furry fellow, crept into a freesia, and the delicate flower leaned over, swung, shook; and when the bee flew away it fluttered still as though it were laughing. Happy, careless flower!
Katherine Mansfield
#87. I really only have Perfect Fun with myself. Other people won't stop and look at the things I want to look at or, if they do, they stop to please me or to humor me or to keep the peace.
Katherine Mansfield
#88. If only one could tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools.
Katherine Mansfield
#89. Conversation is like a dear little baby that is brought in to be handed round. You must rock it, nurse it, keep it on the move if you want it to keep smiling.
Katherine Mansfield
#90. Ellen, not for the wide world! But while she said it, madam - I was looking in her glass; of course, she didn't know I could see her - she put her little hand on her heart just like her dear mother used to, and lifted her eyes ... Oh, madam!
Katherine Mansfield
#91. To work - to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do.
Katherine Mansfield
#92. Finally the little flat spoons lay still on the glass plates. Hennie looked rather exhausted, but she pulled on her white gloves again. She had some trouble with her diamond wrist-watch; it got in her way.
Katherine Mansfield
#93. As in the physical world, so in the spiritual world, pain does not last forever.
Katherine Mansfield
#94. Oh, with you, I could conquer the world - oh, with you I could catch hold of the moon like a little silver sixpence.
Katherine Mansfield
#95. Saw the sun rise. A lovely apricot sky with flames in it and then solemn pink. Heavens, how beautiful...I feel so full of love to-day after having seen the sun rise.
Katherine Mansfield
#96. Laura's upbringing made her wonder for a moment whether it was quite respectful of a workman to talk to her of bangs slap in the eye. But she did quite follow him.
Katherine Mansfield
#98. What I feel for you can't be conveyed in phrasal combinations; It either screams out loud or stays painfully silent but I promise - it beats words. It beats worlds.
Katherine Mansfield
#99. Can one do nothing for the dead? And for a long time the answer had been - Nothing!
Katherine Mansfield
#100. The late evening is the time of times. Then with that unearthly beauty before one it is not hard to realise how far one has to go. To write something that will be worthy of that rising moon, that pale light.
Katherine Mansfield
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