Isak Dinesen Quotes

What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?

~ Isak Dinesen

To be lonely is a state of mind, something completely other than physical solitude; when modern authors rant about the soul's intolerable loneliness, it is only proof of their own intolerable emptiness.

~ Isak Dinesen

Real art must always involve some witchcraft.

~ Isak Dinesen

Love, 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.

~ Isak Dinesen

Man and woman are two locked caskets, of which each contains the key to the other.

~ Isak Dinesen

Where the storyteller is loyal, eternally and unswervingly loyal to the story, there, in the end, silence will speak.

~ Isak Dinesen