Quotes from Edith Schaeffer

There is no occasion when meals should become totally unimportant. Meals can be very small indeed, very inexpensive, short times taken in the midst of a big push of work, but they should be always more than just food.

If you *stop* putting off homemaking until your hope of marriage develops into a reality, and *start* to develop an interesting home right now, it seems to me two things will happen: first, you will develop into the person you could be as you surround yourself with things that express your own tastes and ideas; and second, as you relax and become interested in areas of creativity, you will develop into a more interesting person to be with.

There are various art forms we may or may not have talent for, may or may not have time for, and we may or may not be able to express ourselves in, but we ought to consider this fact-that whether we choose to be an environment or not, we are . We produce an environment other people have to live in. We should be conscious of the fact that this environment which we produce by our very 'being' can affect the people who live with us or work with us.

For anyone who wants to write, and hopes some day to publish what he or she has written, it is far more important to write than it is to study about writing.

I cannot understand the almost exclusive emphasis on racial integration, when in fact we are getting more and more segregated into tight little cliques on age grounds.

Is a Christian- one who communicates daily with the Creator- to divorce himself from the things God created and intended man to have, and which demonstrate the fact that man has been made in the image of God? In other words, are we who have been made in the image of our creator to be less creative than those who do not know the Creator? The Christian should have more vividly expressed creativity in his daily life.

You have started, whether you recognize that fact or not. We foolish mortals sometimes live through years of not realizing how short life is, and that TODAY is our life. The day comes when we die.

Remember that He who created you to be creative gave you the things with which to make beauty and gave you the sensitivity to appreciate and respond to His creation. Creativity is His gift to you and the 'raw materials' to be put together in various ways are His gift to you as well.

All art involves conscious discipline. If one is going to paint, do sculpture, design a building or write a book, it will involve discipline in time and energy- or there would never be any production at all to be seen, felt or enjoyed by ourselves or others... the balance of the use of time is a constant individual problem for all of us: what to do, what to leave undone. One is always having to neglect one thing in order to give precedence to something else. The question is one of priorities.

It is not necessary to have an extravagant food budget in order to serve things with variety and tastefully cooked. It is not necessary to have expensive food on the plates before they can enter the dining room as things of beauty in colour and texture. Food should be served with real care as to the colour and texture on the plates, as well as with imaginative taste. This is where artistic talent and aesthetic expression and fulfillment come in.

I often advise young brides who are traveling during their first weeks or months of marriage to start "homemaking" in a hotel, even if they are there for only a night, rather than groaning about having to "wait so long to have a home". How? ...Your own cloth, your own candlestick, just one rose or daffodil is enough to make a difference... You will be surprised how much difference it makes to have done something to make a room your home, even for one night.

Writing for enjoyment of expression- like music and painting,(and photography)- does not NEED an audience of more than one.