The cure for anything is salt water — sweat, tears, or the sea.
Karen BlixenLove, with very young people, is a heartless business. We drink at that age from thirst, or to get drunk; it is only later in life that we occupy ourselves with the individuality of our wine. A young man in love is essentially enraptured by the forces within himself.
Karen BlixenI have a feeling that wherever I may be in the future, I will be wondering whether there is rain at Ngong.
Karen BlixenThere is hardly any other sphere in which prejudice and superstition of the most horrific kind have been retained so long as in that of women, and just as it must have been an inexpressable relief for humanity when it shook off the burden of religious prejudice and superstition, I think it will be truly glorious when women become real people and have the whole world open before them.
Karen BlixenAll sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.
Karen BlixenMan reaches the highest point of lovableness at 12 to 17 — to get it back, in a second flowering, at the age of 70 to 90.
Karen BlixenGod made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.
Karen BlixenIt is little silly to be a caricature of something of which you know very little, and which means very little to you, but to be your own caricature — that is the true carnival!
Karen BlixenReal art must always involve some witchcraft.
Karen BlixenI don't believe in evil, I believe only in horror. In nature there is no evil, only an abundance of horror: the plagues and the blights and the ants and the maggots.
Karen BlixenThe best of my nature reveals itself in play, and play is sacred.
Karen BlixenOf all the idiots I have met in my life, and the Lord knows that they have not been few or little, I think that I have been the biggest.
Karen BlixenGod made the world, My Lord, and looked at it, and saw that it was good. Yes. But what if the world had looked back at him, to see whether he was good or not?
Karen BlixenMy love was both humble and audacious, like that of a page for his lady...
Karen BlixenI had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the North, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up, near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.
Karen BlixenHuman talk is a centrifugal function, ever in flight outwards from what is on the talker's mind.
Karen BlixenMan and woman are two locked caskets, of which each contains the key to the other.
Karen BlixenIt never has happened, and it never will happen, and that is why it is told.
Karen BlixenThe entire being of a woman is a secret which should be kept.
Karen Blixen