Lucy Maud Montgomery in Her Own Words — Further Quotes from Volume III

5/26/1924
Of course I put on, for the task, clothes that couldn’t be materially injured by it; and as, arrayed thus, I carried out forkful after forkful of manure I grinned to myself as I wondered what my readers — ay, and my publishers, too for that matter — would think, if they could see me. Judging from the letters I get, my readers, at least the young and romantic portion, seem to imagine that I never do anything, except sit, beautifully arrayed, at a desk and “create” “Annes” and “Emilys”! They might admit that I sometimes washed dishes or dusted a room but I’m sure they’d never think I cleaned horse stables!

8/17/1924
We had chicken for every meal at Mammoth Cave. The hens in that region must go in terror of their lives. But it was delicious.

3/11/1925
This morning I tried to write a little again and succeeded. To my joy, I was able to lose myself again in my writing and forget reality. As long as I sat there writing I knew that though my body might dwell amid these distractions of time my spirit inhabited Eternity. This cheered me up a little. I have had a horrible feeling lately that I would never be able to write again.

7/16/1925
On A GOLDEN CAROL, the book Maud wrote before ANNE OF GREEN GABLES:
Probably if I had kept on I might have found a publisher. I am exceedingly thankful I did not. To have had that book accepted would have been the greatest misfortune that ever happened to “my literary career.” I could never have risen above it; and it would probably have committed me to a lifetime of writing “series” similar to it.

1/16/1926
Stuart, when he was two and three years old and found himself shut out of the parlor when “mother” was writing would sweetly and patiently lie down on the hall floor outside and “throw kisses” to me under the door, desisting not until I had thrown him a kiss back, then going away contented.

8/4/1926
This evening I looked forward to another pleasant evening of reading. But in comes a maiden lady of mature vintage “to keep me from being lonesome”!!!

She stayed the whole evening — is terribly hard to talk to — and left me thinking “lonesomeness” the most beautiful state on earth. Solitude does not bore me but gossipy old ladies do.

11/22/1926
Truly, the happiness certain things give us is never to be measured by their worldly importance.

12/2/1926
I have been getting letters from all over lately, adoring Kilmeny. So I hunted it out and read it myself. It seemed as if somebody else had written it. I had no feeling of maternity about it at all. And I found it interesting!!!

12/11/1926
What a pity you can’t photograph starlight! Yet — is it? Isn’t it just as well there is something that cannot be caught?

7/14/1927
I took the letter with me to Lover’s Lane and read it — read it not to myself but to the little girl who walked here years ago and dreamed — and wrote her dreams into books that have pleased a statesmen of the Empire. And the little girl was pleased.

8/6/1922
New inventions crowd on each other’s heels — each more amazing than the last. But the trouble is — one one is happier or better because of them.