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If I Were A First Rate Writer, I Wouldn't Mind A Bit. What Does Depress Me Is This: It Is So Desperately Hard And So Obsessive And So Lonely To Write That, In Return For All This Work, One Would Like A Little Self Satisfaction. And That Is Never Going To Come, For The Simple Reason That I Do Not Deserve It. I Cannot Be A Good Enough Writer. You See? I Call It Grim. But The Future Looks Awfully Clear To Me.

-Martha Gellhorn

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If I Were A

Martha Gellhorn

...

If I Were A First Rate Writer, I Wouldn't Mind A Bit. What Does Depress Me Is This: It Is So Desperately Hard And So Obsessive And So Lonely To Write That, In Return For All This Work, One Would Like A Little Self Satisfaction. And That Is Never Going To Come, For The Simple Reason That I Do Not Deserve It. I Cannot Be A Good Enough Writer. You See? I Call It Grim. But The Future Looks Awfully Clear To Me.

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Nothing Is Better For Self-esteem Than Survival.

In The Last Camp They All Ate Grass, Until The Authorities Forbade Them To Pull It Up. They Were Accustomed To Having The Fruits Of Their Little Communal Gardens Stolen By The Guards, After They Had Done All The Work; But At The Last Camp Everything Was Stolen.

I See Mysteries And Complications Wherever I Look, And I Have Never Met A Steadily Logical Person.

The World's Fat Is Badly Divided.

Why Do People Talk Of The Horrors Of Old Age? It's Great. I Feel Like A Fine Old Car With The Parts Gradually Wearing Out, But I'm Not Complaining,... Those Who Find Growing Old Terrible Are People Who Haven't Done What They Wanted With Their Lives.

It Is Charming The Way Everyone In The South Says, 'come Back.' This Is The Regulation Farewell At Gas Stations, Soda Fountains, General Stores, Tourist Camps. 'come Back,' They Call, 'come Back.' Do They Feel Marooned In One Place, Lost, Needing To Believe Someone Will Return To Share Their Exile On The Similar Main Streets, In The Varied But Always New-looking Land?

A Broken Heart Is Such A Shabby Thing, Like Poverty And Failure And The Incurable Diseases Which Are Also Deforming. I Hate It And Am Ashamed Of It, And I Must Somehow Repair This Heart And Put It Back Into Its Normal Condition, As A Tough Somewhat Scarred But Operating Organ.

From The Earliest Wars Of Men To Our Last Heart-breaking Worldwide Effort, All We Could Do Was Kill Ourselves. Now We Are Able To Kill The Future.

[on The United States:] We Are A Wildly Energetic People In Our Pursuit Of Pleasure, Let Alone In Our Pursuit Of Money, And We Are Very Odd To Look At As We Go About Our Lives.

People Often Say, With Pride, 'i'm Not Interested In Politics.' They Might As Well Say, 'i'm Not Interested In My Standard Of Living, My Health, My Job, My Rights, My Freedoms, My Future Or Any Future.' ... If We Mean To Keep Any Control Over Our World And Lives, We Must Be Interested In Politics.

America Has Made No Reparation To The Vietnamese, Nothing. We Are The Richest People In The World And They Are Among The Poorest. We Savaged Them, Though They Had Never Hurt Us, And We Cannot Find It In Our Hearts, Our Honor, To Give Them Help-because The Government Of Vietnam Is Communist. And Perhaps Because They Won.

I Used To Write Letters To The Wounded In The Palace Hotel, And I Used To Drive A Station Wagon With Blood In Bottles To A Battalion Aid Station.

I Tell You Loneliness Is The Thing To Master. Courage And Fear, Love, Death Are Only Parts Of It And Can Easily Be Ruled Afterwards. If I Make Myself Master My Own Loneliness There Will Be Peace Or Safety: And Perhaps These Are The Same.

Americans Did Not Acquire Their Fear Neurosis As The Result Of A Traumatic Experience - War Devasting Their Country, Pestilence Sweeping The Land, Famine Wiping Out Helpless Millions. Americans Had To Be Taught To Hate And Fear An Unseen Enemy. The Teachers Were Men In Official Positions, In Government, Men Whom Americans Normally Trust Without Question.

[on Paris:] I Do Not Know Any City So Beautiful And You Can Be Unhappy There And Notice Your Unhappiness Less, Having The City To Look At.

Despite Official Drivel About Clean Bombs And Tactical Nuclear Weapons, Anyone Who Can Read A Newspaper Or Listen To A Radio Knows That Some Of Us Mortals Have The Power To Destroy The Human Race And Man's Home On Earth. We Need Not Even Make War; Only By Preparing, By Playing With Our New Weapons, We Poison The Air, The Water, The Soil Of Our Plants, Damage The Health Of The Living, And Weaken The Chances Of The Newborn.

Joseph Mccarthy, The Junior Republican Senator From Wisconsin, Ruled America Like Devil King For Four Years. His Purges Were An American Mirror Image Of Stalin's Purges, An Unnoticed Similarity.

The Human Spirit Can Be Indomitable And It Is This Rare Quality That Is Not At All To Be Expected That Makes Survivors Of Us All, The Human Race In The Grand Scheme Of Things.

Once You Get A Tyranny, You Don't Easily Get Rid Of It. Much Better To Remember About Eternal Vigilance.

Furthermore, They Were Constantly Informed By All The Camp Authorities That They Had Been Abandoned By The World: They Were Beggars And Lucky To Receive The Daily Soup Of Starvation.

The English Are Very Proud Of Their Parliament, And Week In, Week Out, Century After Century, They Have Pretty Good Cause To Be.

It Would Be A Bitter Cosmic Joke If We Destroy Ourselves Due To Atrophy Of The Imagination.

Dachau Has Been My Own Lifelong Point Of No Return. Between The Moment When I Walked Through The Gate Of That Prison, With Its Infamous Motto, 'arbeit Macht Frei,' And When I Walked Out At The End Of A Day That Had No Ordinary Scale Of Hours, I Was Changed, And How I Looked At The Human Condition, The World We Live In, Changed ... Years Of War Had Taught Me A Great Deal, But War Was Nothing Like Dachau. Compared To Dachau, War Was Clean.

I Feel Very Troubled In The Head And Heart.

Life Is Not Long At All, Never Long Enough, But Days Are Very Long Indeed.

Gradually I Came To Realize That People Will More Readily Swallow Lies Than Truth, As If The Taste Of Lies Was Homey, Appetizing: A Habit.

In November You Begin To Know How Long The Winter Will Be.

I Daresay I Was The Worst Bed Partner In Five Continents.

I Followed The War Wherever I Could Reach It.

Freedom' Is The Most Expensive Possession There Is; It Has To Be Paid For With Loneliness.

Journalism At Its Best And Most Effective Is Education. Apparently People Would Not Learn For Themselves, Nor From Others.

People May Correctly Remember The Events Of Twenty Years Ago (a Remarkable Feat), But Who Remembers His Fears, His Disgusts, His Tone Of Voice? It Is Like Trying To Bring Back The Weather Of That Time.

The Ends Never Justify The Means Because It Never Ends.

After A Lifetime Of War-watching, I See War As An Endemic Human Disease, And Governments Are The Carriers.

All Amateur Travellers Have Experienced Horror Journeys, Long Or Short, Sooner Or Later, One Way Or Another. As A Student Of Disaster, I Note That We React Alike To Our Tribulations: Frayed And Bitter At The Time, Proud Afterwards. Nothing Is Better For Self-esteem Than Survival.

What The Trees Can Do Handsomely-greening And Flowering, Fading And Then The Falling Of Leaves-human Beings Cannot Do With Dignity, Let Alone Without Pain.

We Lisp In Numbers, In The U.s. We Are Deluged By Ample, Often Mysterious Statistics. ... Like Many In This Country, I Have Come To Regard Statistics With Doubt And Merely As A Hint Of The Probable Shape Of Fact.

Stop Spying On The Lawful Citizenry. Democracy And Dossiers Go Ill Together. It Is All Right For God But All Wrong For The State To Keep Its Eye On Sparrows.

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Thousand Got Away To Other Countries; Thousands Returned To Spain Tempted By False Promises Of Kindness. By The Tens Of Thousands, These Spaniards Died Of Neglect In The Concentration Camps.

There Were Ten Concentration Camps In France From 1939 On.

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You Have To Stop Living In Order To Write.

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