Riding the train gives him too much time to think, he has decided. Too much thinking can ruin you.
Writers don’t write to inform other people, they write to find out something themselves.
The ‘creator’ and the ‘editor’ – two halves of the writer whole – should sleep in separate rooms.
Some people have an unrealistic expectation when it comes to getting published; the fact is most publishers will turn down your work which is why you need to be persistent.
It’s always obvious to me when someone is looking at me with an idea of who I am and hoping that that’s the person I’m going to be. No matter how subtle it is, it’s there, and you want to give them who they really want. But it ain’t me.
My success is not who I am.
It’s true that every day away from work requires two more days to get back into it.
I’ve never been one to tear the social fabric.
Make peace with what is.
Jesus but people got weird when they lived alone.
He hangs on now, pressing his hand lightly against the wall, below the window, waiting for the familiar arrow of pain. Only there is none. An oddly pleasant swell of memory, a wave of warmth flooding over him, sliding back, slowly. It is a first.
Because it has always been easier to believe himself capable of evil than to accept evil in others.
And once I wanted to be a fireman. Then.
Happy!” She looks at him. “Oh, Ward! You give us all the definition, will you? But first you’d better check on those kids. Every day, to make sure they’re good and safe, that.
A little advice about feelings kiddo; don’t expect it always to tickle.” Dr, Berger.
He will be eighteen in January, but he looks younger than that, and vulnerable; yet older at the same time. Tired. His face is drawn. He has an urge to shield him, but how? There is no way. No way at all.
It’s all right, Con, to feel anxious. Allow yourself a couple of bad days, now and then, will you?
First. I give a damn. About everything you do.
Maybe you gotta feel lousy sometime, in order to feel better. A little advice, kiddo, about feeling. Don’t think too much about it. And don’t expect it always to tickle.
He closes his eyes. A jungle in there, inside his head. He opens them quickly.
He had left off being a perfectionist then, when he discovered that not promptly kept appointments, not a house circumspectly clean, not membership in Onwentsia, or the Lake Forest Golf and Country Club, or the Lawyers’ Club, not power, or knowledge, or goodness – not anything – cleared you through the terrifying office of chance; that it is chance and not perfection that rules the world.