Come Quotes (page 253)
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It seems priggish or pollyannaish to deny that my intention in writing the work was to titillate the nastier propensities of my readers. My own healthy inheritance of original sin comes out in the book and I enjoyed raping and ripping by proxy. It is the novelist’s innate cowardice that makes him depute to imaginary personalities the sins that he is too cautious to commit for himself.
Anthony Burgess
What's wrong?" he said. "I'll tell you what's wrong: you're killing us."But I thought that's what you wanted?"We did," my mother wept, "but not this way."It hadn't occurred to me until that moment, but I seemed to have come full circle. What started as a dodge had inadvertently become my life's work, an irony I never could have appreciated had my extraordinary parents not put me through Princeton.
David Sedaris
To be in any form, what is that?
(round and round we go, all of us, and ever come back thither,)
If nothing lay more develop'd the quahung in it's callous shell were enough.
Mine is no callous shell.
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
they seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.
I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and I am happy, to touch my person to someone else's is about as much as I can stand.
Walt Whitman
Asia and Europe: tiny corners of the Cosmos. Every sea: a mere drop. Mount Athos: a lump of dirt. The present moment is the smallest point in all eternity. All is microscopic, changeable, disappearing. All things come from that faraway place, either originating directly from that governing part which is common to all, or else following from it as consequences. So even the gaping jaws of the lion, deadly poison, and all harmful things like thorns or an oozing bog are products of that awesome...
Marcus Aurelius
If I were a first rate writer, I wouldn't mind a bit. What does depress me is this: it is so desperately hard and so obsessive and so lonely to write that, in return for all this work, one would like a little self satisfaction. And that is never going to come, for the simple reason that I do not deserve it. I cannot be a good enough writer. You see? I call it grim. But the future looks awfully clear to me.
Martha Gellhorn
