Literary Birthday – 18 June – Gail Godwin

Gail Godwin Quotes

1. Dreams say what they mean, but they don’t say it in daytime language.
2. The characters that I create are parts of myself and I send them on little missions to find out what I don’t know yet.
3. Negative people present us with an accelerated personal growth opportunity.
4. None of us suddenly becomes something overnight. The preparations have been in the making for a lifetime.
5. There are two kinds of people. One kind, you can just tell by looking at them at what point they congealed into their final selves. It might be a very nice self, but you know you can expect no more surprises from it. Whereas, the other kind keep moving, changing… They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion, they are the only people who are still alive.
6. Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre.
7. One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are.
8. The more you respect and focus on the singular and the strange, the more you become aware of the universal and infinite.
9. Other people don’t exist when you’re not with them.
10. The future arches above us all like a giant question mark, looming or embracing by whims and turns.
11. There are things we can’t undo, but perhaps there is a kind of constructive remorse that could transform regrettable acts into something of service to life.
12. During the act of writing I have told myself something that I didn’t know I knew.

Gail Godwin is an American novelist and short story writer. She has written 14 novels, two short story collections, and three non-fiction books. Her works include Flora, Father Melancholy’s Daughter, and Evensong. The main protagonist in her books is often restricted by family, tradition, and the patriarchy. Most of Godwin’s early works include a prominent mother-daughter relationship as well. Godwin was awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (1975–76) and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1975–76). By the early 2000s, five of Godwin’s books had made The New York Times Best Seller list and three were finalists for the National Book Award.

Photograph © Martin Brading: http://www.martinbrading.com/, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gail_Godwin_headshot.jpg

by Amanda Patterson
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