“This is what Laura loved about literature. You could see things in it that perhaps werent there, but might be. And even that didnt matter if, in the end, readers needed something to be there. They ...”

“If Laura was so prolific with poems, and in truth she was, then what was the problem with Megans request? Couldnt Laura, with a little doing, keep stringing together line after line of words and co...”

“Have tea, might write, Laura returned.”

“If she was going to write a novel, she felt defeated before she began, because someone might be coming along to pick it apart, looking for symbols like The Conch or The Whale, which seemed to have ...”

“Maybe you didnt need to know anything special to write a work of fiction. Maybe you didnt need to delve into some kind of life question you knew youd lived. Perhaps your subconscious would do the j...”

“Had Mary Shelley fretted so? Maybe yes, maybe no. Shed begun her classic work on a dare. Had culled a dream to bring it into being. But it was not lost on Laura that the story might be a prolonged ...”

“Maybe you didnt need to know anything special to write a work of fiction. Maybe you didnt need to delve into some kind of life question you knew youd lived. Perhaps your subconscious would do the j...”

“One Bagatelle, and Ill raise you a novel, Megan had tweeted back.Writing for tea? Now that would have been a solution for the British empire, Laura returned.Writing for me, Megan had typed.Ill writ...”

“Maybe you didn’t need to know anything special to write a work of fiction. Maybe you didn’t need to delve into some kind of life question you knew you’d lived. Perhaps your subconscious would do th...”

“A new novel awaits my arrival, prepares for my careful inspection. Yet a novel is always a long dream that lives in me for years before I know where to go to hunt it out.”

“The very qualities that make one a writer in the first place contribute to the block: hypersensitivity, stubbornness, insatiability, and so on. Given the general oddity of writers, no wonder there ...”

“great writers are indecent peoplethey live unfairlysaving the best part for paper.good human beings save the worldso that bastards like me can keep creating art,become immortal.if you read this aft...”

“Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.”

“Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on ...”