Vita Sackville-West Quotes

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.

If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.

Life is too short to waste . . . 'Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!

The chief beauty about time is that you cannot waste it in advance. The next year, the next day, the next hour are lying ready for you, as perfect, as unspoiled, as if you had never wasted or misapplied a single moment in all your life. You can turn over a new leaf every hour if you choose.

Moments are precious, sometimes they linger and other times they're fleeing, and yet so much could be done in them; you could change a mind, you could save a life and you could even fall in love.

If one waits for the right time to come before writing, the right time never comes.

You've got to make haste while it's still light of day.

You have two choices in life. You either die or do something with your time. You're going to be doing something - why not write?

Take all the swift advantage of the hours.

The earlier, the more fun. Why put it off? It’s the atomic age!

You lose such a lot of time just sleeping ... when you might just be living! ... It seems such a pity we can't live nights too.

They who know how to employ opportunities will often find that they can create them; and what we can achieve depends less on the amount of time we possess than on the use we make of our time.

If you're not busy living, you're dying.

Half of today is better than all of tomorrow.

If you have time don't wait for time.

The thing about writing is that if you have the impulse, you will find the time.

The problem with waiting until tomorrow is that when it finally arrives, it is called today.

Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take time by the forelock; for, when it is once past, there is no recalling it.

Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.

There are 30,000 days in your life. When I was 24, I realized I’m almost 9,000 days down. There are no warm-ups, no practice rounds, no reset buttons. Your biggest risk isn’t failing, it’s getting too comfortable. Every day we’re writing a few more words of a story. I wanted my story to be an adventure and that’s made all the difference. Instead of trying to make your life perfect, give yourself the freedom to make it an adventure, and go ever upward.

For one day spent well, and agreeably to your precepts, is preferable to an eternity of error.

I'm a highly, highly, highly creative human being. I write music all the time. I write scripts constantly. I run my own production company. I'm also a very determined businesswoman. I've a town to deal with. I've got a lot of things to do and I don't have time to be classified as difficult, and I don't have time to care.

No "natural" resource is more precious and to be used more wisely than time. These mortal moments matter more than we know. There are no idle hours; there are only idle people. In true righteousness there is serenity, but there is an array of reminders that the "sacred present" is packed with possibilities which are slipping by us, which are going away from us each moment.