Literary Birthday – 22 June – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Anne Morrow Lindbergh was born on 22 June 1906 and died on 7 February 2001.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh Quotes

1. One can never pay in gratitude: one can only pay ‘in kind’ somewhere else in life.
2. The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.
3. The wave of the future is coming and there is no fighting it.
4. I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.
5. It is only in solitude that I ever find my own core.
6. Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
7. I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.
8. Only love can be divided endlessly and still not diminish.
9. The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.
10. When I cannot write a poem, I bake biscuits and feel just as pleased.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh was an American author, aviator, and the wife of Charles Lindbergh. After the second world war, she moved away from politics and wrote extensive poetry and non-fiction that helped the Lindberghs regain their reputation, which had been greatly damaged since the days leading up to the war. Her first book, North to the Orient (1935) won one of the inaugural National Book Awards: the Most Distinguished General Nonfiction of 1935. Her second book, Listen! The Wind (1938), won the same award in its fourth year. She had published her first novel, The Steep Ascent, about a dangerous airplane journey over the Alps, in 1944. She is the author of the popular book, Gift from the Sea. She received the Christopher Award for War Within and Without, the last installment of her published diaries.

Source for image: Underwood & Underwood, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

by Amanda Patterson
Please click here for our Literary Birthday Calendar