We are all so clumsy, my dear, and words are all we have, poor signals like bonfires and flags trying to express what shipwreck is.
Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968) American journalist, travel writer, novelist, political theorist
Letter to Dorothy Thompson (Jan 1927)
(Source)
In William Holtz, ed., Dorothy Thompson and Rose Wilder Lane: Forty Years of Friendship (1991)
Quotations by:
Lane, Rose Wilder
I somehow always have this idea that as soon as I can get through this work that’s piled up ahead of me, I’ll really write a beautiful thing. But I never do.
Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968) American journalist, travel writer, novelist, political theorist
Letter to Guy Moyston (1920s)
(Source)
Quoted in William V. Holtz, The Ghost in the Little House, ch. 8, sec. 2 (1993).
The reason I can’t take myself seriously as a “creative artist,” Guy dear, is because I’m not one. It’s not somehow not in me to bear very patiently with my own mediocrity. If I can’t — and I can’t — be Shakespeare or Goethe, I’d rather raise good cabbages. And that is why I would not write at all, except that there is more money in writing than in cabbages, not only more money, but more freedom. […] This is why I’m not “filled with my art.” I ain’t got no art. I’ve got only a kind of craftsman’s skill, and make stories as I make biscuits or embroider underwear or wrap up packages.
Rose Wilder Lane (1886-1968) American journalist, travel writer, novelist, political theorist
Letter to Guy Moyston (25 Jun 1925)
(Source)
Quoted in William Holtz, The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane, ch. 9, sec. 5 (1995).