Now, why did Kitty, who was the falsest thing on earth, who was in tune with every kind of falsity, by merely suffering somehow remind us of reality? Why did her tears reveal to me what I had learned long ago, but had forgotten in my frenzied love, that there is a draft that we must drink or not be fully human? I knew that one must know the truth. I knew quite well that when one is adult one must raise to one's lips the wine of the truth, heedless that it is not sweet like milk, but draws the mouth with its strength, and celebrate communion with reality[.]

— Rebecca West

[On Jane Austen] She was fully possessed of the idealism which is a necessary ingredient of the great satirist. If she criticized the institutions of earth, it was because she had very definite ideas regarding the institutions of heaven.

— Rebecca West

People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

— Rebecca West

People call me a feminist whenever I express statements that distinguish me from a doormat.

— Rebecca West

She understood children, and knew that they were adults handicapped by a humiliating disguise and had their adult qualities within them.

— Rebecca West

Their faces were clay-colored and featureless, yet not stupid; they might have been shrewd turnips.

— Rebecca West

There is a definite process by which one made people into friends and it involved talking to them and listening to them for hours at a time.

— Rebecca West

There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

— Rebecca West

There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues. That is all.

— Rebecca West

The word “idiot” comes from a Greek root meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect: intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through a darkness deep as that cast by malformed cells in the brain. It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy: men are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object but not the details indicative of their nature.

— Rebecca West