QUOTES BY Katherine Mansfield

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.

To acknowledge the presence of fear is to give birth to failure.

To work — to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do.

It's a terrible thing to be alone — yes it is — it is — but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath — as terrible as you like — but a mask.

I have made it a rule of my life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to become a writer can afford to indulge in it. You can't get it into shape; you can't build on it; it's only good for wallowing in.

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. This is the mystery. This is what I must do.

It's an infernal nuisance to love Life as I do. I seem to love it more as time goes on rather than less. It never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel. I do hope I'll be able to keep in it long enough to do some really good work. I'm sick of people dying who promise well.

Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order. This is what life has taught me.

The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.

Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.

Were we positive, eager, real — alive? No, we were not. We were a nothingness shot with gleams of what might be.

When we can begin to take our failures nonseriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.