Fiction should be in its way subversive. I don't think books should be neat or gentle or genteel or comforting. I think they should be raw. They should be written as perfectly as possible, but what they do is to stir up, to lance the reader.
I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.
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Robert Louis Stevenson
In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?
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Rainer Maria Rilke
If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework you can still be writing, because you have that space.
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Joyce Carol Oates
A successful book is not made of what is in it, but what is left out of it.
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Mark Twain
And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.
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Dorothy Parker
More Quotes By Edna OBrien
Love .. . is like nature, but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight, and ultimately people die with...
Writers are always anxious, always on the run--from the telephone, from responsibilities, from the distractions of the world.
It is impossible to capture the essence of love in writing, only its symptoms remain, the erotic absorption, the huge disparity between the times together and the times apart, the sense of being excluded.
That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.
My friends I tell you this, we are a jolly group but put us in uniform and all that change. In war I don’t know who my brother. In war I don’t know who my friend. War make everybody savage. Who can say what lies...
