Marriage had certain commercial advantages. By it the man secures the exclusive right to the woman's body and by it, the woman binds the man to support her during the rest of her life.... A more disgraceful bargain was never struck.
Rebecca WestAll our Western thought is founded on this repulsive pretence that pain is the proper price of any good thing.
Rebecca WestGetting a divorce is nearly always as cheerful and useful an occupation as breaking valuable china.
Rebecca WestI cannot think that espionage can be recommended as a technique for building an impressive civilization. It's a lout's game.
Rebecca Westworks of art feel towards human beings exactly as we do towards ghosts. The transparency of spectres, the diffuseness in space which lets them drift through doors and walls, and their smell of death, disgust us not more than we disgust works of art by our meaninglessness, our diffuseness in time which lets us drift through three score years and ten without a quarter as much significance as a picture establishes instantaneously.
Rebecca West