Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield
Kathleen Mansfield Murrywas a prominent New Zealand modernist short story writer who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. At 19, Mansfield left New Zealand and settled in the United Kingdom, where she became a friend of modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. In 1917 she was diagnosed with extrapulmonary tuberculosis, which led to her death at the age of 34...
NationalityNew Zealander
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth14 October 1888
writing people effort
Why it should be such an effort to write to the people one loves I can't imagine. It's none at all to write to those who don't really count.
real hate writing
Letters are the real curse of my existence. I hate to write them: I have to. If I don't, there they are - the great guilty gates barring my way.
stars writing dark
I think of you often. Especially in the evenings, when I am on the balcony and it’s too dark to write or to do anything but wait for the stars. A time I love. One feels half disembodied, sitting like a shadow at the door of one’s being while the dark tide rises. Then comes the moon, marvellously serene, and small stars, very merry for some reason of their own. It is so easy to forget, in a worldly life, to attend to these miracles.
writing moon light
The late evening is the time of times. Then with that unearthly beauty before one it is not hard to realise how far one has to go. To write something that will be worthy of that rising moon, that pale light.
writing light tree
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.
live-life book writing
I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house, grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of this, the expression of this, I want to be writing (Though I may write about cabmen. That’s no matter.) But warm, eager, living life — to be rooted in life — to learn, to desire, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.
writing people trying
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.
writing imagine looking-back
Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
writing
Better to write twaddle, anything, than nothing at all.
writing recluse
I am a recluse at present & do nothing but write & read & read & write
fine further gets hand rare warming
E. M. Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He's a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain't going to be no tea.
accept life suffering
Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become Love. That is the mystery.
asking friend future hope present share treating
I am treating you as my friend asking you share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses.
alone beneath lower mask prepared terrible until yes
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.