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Writer Quotes

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Writer Quotes

“To write is to reveal oneself. When I write something, fiction or non-fiction, I do not expect you to accept what I write, nor to agree with what I propose. I expect you to spend at least a tenth of a second to think about it - may be not about the characters, nor about the piece, but at least about the idea.”

“The viewpoint character in each story is usually someone trapped in a living nightmare, but this doesn't guarantee that we and the protagonist are at one. In fact Woolrich often makes us pull away from the person at the center of the storm, splitting our reaction in two, stripping his protagonist of moral authority, denying us the luxury of unequivocal identification, drawing characters so psychologically warped and sometimes so despicable that a part of us wants to see them suffer. Woolrich also denies us the luxury of total disidentification with all sorts of sociopaths, especially those who wear badges. His Noir Cop tales are crammed with acts of police sadism, casually committed or at least endorsed by the detective protagonist. These monstrosities are explicitly condemned almost never and the moral outrage we feel has no internal support in the stories except the objective horror of what is shown, so that one might almost believe that a part of Woolrich wants us to enjoy the spectacles. If so, it's yet another instance of how his most powerful novels and stories are divided against themselves so as to evoke in us a divided response that mirrors his own self-division. ("Introduction")”

“I know how you feel because I’ve been there too. I’ve hated and I’ve loved. I’ve seen my demons root and crawl and my angels branch and soar. I've died within myself and lived a thousand different lives. I too fight the same war and I too am drowning in the puddles of self-consciousness this world created.”

“How could I live above the water or breathe under it. How could I swim in darkness consumed in an ocean of you? Falling or flying towards you, losing or finding myself in you and beauty was never the word to catch all that you are. For now I know the means of the infinite and it all starts and ends with you.”

“... and I realise the only way to tell the others is through the way my voice can take these broken words and turn it into music. Turn it into poetry. And I sing to make myself come alive, but also for you, because I’d like this to mean something. To not disappear with the dark I will enter one day and so now I will tell. If not for you, then for my own heart, because it tells me to, and I'm learning to listen.”

“Poetry isn’t an island, it is the bridge. Poetry isn’t a ship, it is the lifeboat. Poetry isn’t swimming. Poetry is water.”

“I only wrote prose before I met you. My musings were superfluous and serious as well. But now the words dance with me. I sing with them and we create poetry.”

“I left the bank because they wouldn’t deposit my cheque of poems. So I went to the store, but they didn’t accept my currency of words. So I boxed all my stories and took them to charity. But they refused my donation and asked me to give blood instead. I opened the notebooks and made them look, 'What do you think I wrote these in?”

“She: Hello. I am a big fan of yours, Mr. Writer. He: Do you seriously like reading my words? She: I won't tell a lie to you. From the day I started reading your words, they connected with a deeper part of my soul. He: This is so amazing to hear. Glad my words could make you feel something. She: I have anxiety issues. I usually cannot sleep untill 3am most nights. So, I stay up late in the night and stalk you. That's when I spend time reading your words and checking your posts. They mean a lot to me. I am obsessively in love with your words. He: Wow! Just Fantastic. I am elated to meet you. She: And I am ecstatic to meet you. I have been following you from the past five years. I have come here to this city, specially to meet you.”

“She: Hello. I am a big fan of yours, Mr. Writer. He: Hello. Do you seriously like reading my words? She: I won't tell a lie to you. From the day I started reading your words, they connected with a deeper part of my soul. He: This is so amazing to hear. Glad my words could make you feel something. She: I have anxiety issues. I usually cannot sleep untill 3 am most nights. So, I stay up late in the night and stalk you. That's when I spend time reading your words and checking your posts. They mean a lot to me. I am obsessively in love with your words. He: Wow! Just Fantastic. I am elated to meet you. She: And I am ecstatic to meet you. I have been following you from the past five years. I have come here to this city, specially to meet you.”

“In this connection I must mention too a not altogether rational idea which I had nourished more or less vaguely for a long time: the notion that before I could achieve greatness as a writer I would have to pass through some ordeal. For this ordeal I had waited in vain. Even total war (I was never in uniform) failed to ruffle my life. I seemed doomed to quietness.”

“To prove the (rather scurrile) point, the writer acts both roles—that of the giving mother and the recipient child—on his own person. He gives to himself, out of himself, beautiful words and ideas, thus establishing an autarchy. That "magic gesture," acted on oneself, showing how the neurotic child in the writer allegedly wanted to be treated—kindly and lovingly—presents in the adult an unconscious tendentious alibi and is specific for the artist. Whereas the typical neurotic needs two people (himself and an object) for unconscious re-enactment of an infantile fantasy, the writer combines both roles into one.”

“Life's trials will test you, and shape you, but don’t let them change who you are.” ~ Aaron Lauritsen, ‘100 Days Drive”

“At some point, you just gotta forgive the past, your happiness hinges on it.”