Journal of Katherine Mansfield Quotes

“To be alive and to be a ‘writer’ is enough.”
― Katherine Mansfield, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“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, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“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, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“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, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“Last night I spent in her arms - and tonight I hate her - which being interpreted, means that I adore her; that I cannot lie in my bed and not feel the magic of her body. I feel more powerfully all those so-termed sexual impulses with her than I have with any man. She enthrals, enslaves me - and her personal self - her body absolute - is my worship.”
― Katherine Mansfield, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“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, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun. All that we mean when we speak of the external world. A want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it’s no good — there’s only one phrase that will do) a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of the sun.”
― Katherine Mansfield, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“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, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“Do you feel in this letter my love for you today - It is as warm as a bird's nest.”
― Katherine Mansfield, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“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, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“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, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“I am tired, blissfully tired. Do you suppose that daisies feel blissfully tired when they shut for the night and the dews descend upon them?”
― Katherine Mansfield, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“I have two rooms and a huge balcony, and so many mountains that I haven't even begun to climb them yet.”
― Katherine Mansfield, Journal of Katherine Mansfield