Writing
Quotes
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Writing is its own reward.
I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.
Stories are the only enchantment possible, for when we begin to see our suffering as a story, we are saved.
Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.
I write emotional algebra.
If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.
The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.
Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say... but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.
The Consolations of Philosophy
I do not really write novels, but more wobbly things, sets of dreams that come from imagination.
Interview (2014)
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays
Essays