Wallace Stegner Quotes


Touch. It is touch that is the deadliest enemy of chastity, loyalty, monogamy, gentility with its codes and conventions and restraints. By touch we are betrayed and betray others ... an accidental brushing of shoulders or touching of hands ... hands laid on shoulders in a gesture of comfort that lies like a thief, that takes, not gives, that wants, not offers, that awakes, not pacifies. When one flesh is waiting, there is electricity in the merest contact.


Citations

Stegner, Wallace. Angle of Repose. Doubleday, 1971.

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Wallace Stegner
Wallace Stegner
  • Born: February 18, 1909
  • Died: April 13, 1993
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Novelist

Wallace Earle Stegner was an American novelist, short story writer, environmentalist, and historian, often called "The Dean of Western Writers". He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award in 1977.