Doris Grumbach (1910-2007) was a German writer and artist. She spent her childhood in Vienna, where she attended the Vienna Academy of Music and studied painting with Hans Makart. During World War II, she was forced to flee Austria for France, where she befriended the American novelist James Jones, who helped her escape into Allied custody in 1944. After the war, she moved to New York City with Jones, where he introduced her to his friend Marshall Field III
Field hired her as a textile designer at his department store, which was then owned by the House of Field. At the age of 62, she married him after his first wife died.
The reason that extended solitude seemed so hard to endure was not that we missed others but that we began to wonder if we ourselves were present, because for so long our existence depended upon assurances from them.Doris Grumbach
Talk uses up ideas.... Once I have spoken them aloud they are lost to me dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them like bulbs in the rich soil of silence do they grow.Doris Grumbach
