Quotes from Zelda

Nancy Milford ·  426 pages

Rating: (6.4K votes)


“In reality, there is no materialist like the artist, asking back from life the double and the wastage and the cost on what he puts out in emotional usury.”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda


“I hope I'll never get ambitious enough to try anything. It's so much nicer to be damned sure I could do it better than other people - and I might not could if I tried...”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda


“It was not, Zelda wrote, prosperity or the softness of life, or any instability that marred the war generation; it was a great emotional disappointment resulting from the fact that life moved in poetic gestures when they were younger and had since settled back into buffoonery.”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda


“It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda


“He fought for his very survival. If he fought dirty sometimes that does not diminish the fact that he refused to give up.”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda



“I was in love with a whirlwind and I must spin a net big enough to catch it,”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda


“Zelda was a creature who overflowed with activity, radiant with desire to take from life every chance her charm, youth, and intelligence provided so abundantly.”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda


“It’s the first time I’ve seen early morning in a terribly long time— The sun all yellow and red, like a huge luminous peach hanging on a black shadow-tree—just visible thru the mist—”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda


“Sweetheart, please don’t worry about me— I want to always be a help—You know I am all yours and love you with all my heart.”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda


About the author

Nancy Milford
Born place: in Dearborn, Michigan, The United States
Born date March 26, 1938
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Popular quotes

“Og nú heldur hann þeir svensku séu ekki jafngáfaðir og hann. Ég skal segja þér: þeir eru gáfaðri en hann, þeir eru svo gáfaðir að einginn kraftur fær þá til að trúa því að það samsafn af lúsugum betlurum norðrí raskati, sem kallar sig íslendinga og nú eru bráðum allir dauðir guðisélof, hafi skrifað fornsögurnar.”
― Halldór Kiljan Laxness, quote from Iceland's Bell


“First of all, you have heard me talk of Logres. It was the old name for this country, thousands of years ago; in the old days when the struggle between good and evil was more bitter and open than it is now. That struggle goes on all round us all the time, like two armies fighting. And sometimes one of them seems to be winning and sometimes the other, but neither has ever triumphed altogether. Nor ever will,” he added softly to himself, “for there is something of each in every man.”
― Susan Cooper, quote from Over Sea, Under Stone


“Being nearly four years old, she was certainly a child: and children are human (if one allows the term "human" a wide sense): but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby: and babies are of course not human--they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes: the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid, since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the lower vertebrates.
In short, babies have minds which work in terms and categories of their own which cannot be translated into the terms and categories of the human mind.
It is true that they look human--but not so human, to be quite fair, as many monkeys.
Subconsciously, too, every one recognizes they are animals--why else do people always laugh when a baby does some action resembling the human, as they would at a praying mantis? If the baby was only a less-developed man, there would be nothing funny in it, surely.”
― Richard Hughes, quote from A High Wind in Jamaica


“It is probable that Tom Towers considered himself the most powerful man in Europe; and so he walked on from day to day, studiously striving to look a man, but knowing within his breast that he was a god.”
― Anthony Trollope, quote from The Warden


“I stared at her. "But she drugged us."

"That is no longer news, dumbass. Are you going to ask why she drugged you?"

"Allright," I said, narrowing my eyes. "Why?"

"Because, dear October, you're the most passively suicidal person I've ever met, and that's saying something. You'll never open your wrists, but you'll run headfirst into hell. You'll have good reasons. You'll have great reasons, even. And a part of you will be praying that you won't come out again.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from An Artificial Night


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