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I Usually Start With Something That Has Some Energy, Like A Compressed Character Or A Situation That's Wound Up Like A Spring. Then All I Have To Do Is Let It Go, Let Its Energy Carry The Story. And That May Not Turn Out To Be The Beginning Of The Book.

-Janet Fitch

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I Usually Start With

Janet Fitch

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I Usually Start With Something That Has Some Energy, Like A Compressed Character Or A Situation That's Wound Up Like A Spring. Then All I Have To Do Is Let It Go, Let Its Energy Carry The Story. And That May Not Turn Out To Be The Beginning Of The Book.

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She Would Be Half A Planet Away, Floating In A Turquoise Sea, Dancing By Moonlight To Flamenco Guitar.

They Wanted The Real Mother, The Blood Mother, The Great Womb, Mother Of Fierce Compassion, A Woman Large Enough To Hold All The Pain, To Carry It Away. What We Needed Was Someone Who Bled...mother's Big Enough, Wide Enough For Us To Hide In...mother's Who Would Breathe For Us When We Could Not Breathe Anymore, Who Would Fight For Us, Who Would Kill For Us, Die For Us.

Let Me Tell You A Few Things About Regret...there Is No End To It. You Cannot Find The Beginning Of The Chain That Brought Us From There To Here. Should You Regret The Whole Chain, And The Air In Between, Or Each Link Separately As If You Could Uncouple Them? Do You Regret The Beginning Which Ended So Badly, Or Just The Ending Itself?

Appealing To The Five Senses Is The Feature That Will Always Set Writing Apart From The Visual Media. A Good Writer Will Tell Us What The World Smells Like, What The Textures Are, What The Sounds Are, What The Light Looks Like, What The Weather Is.

That Was The Thing About Words, They Were Clear And Specific-chair, Eye, Stone- But When You Talked About Feelings, Words Were Too Stiff, They Were This And Not That, They Couldn't Include All The Meanings. In Defining, They Always Left Something Out.

Remember It All, Every Insult, Every Tear. Tattoo It On The Inside Of Your Mind. In Life, Knowledge Of Poisons Is Essential. I've Told You, Nobody Becomes An Artist Unless They Have To.

Do You Ever Want To Go Home?' I Asked Paul. He Brushed An Ash From My Face. 'it's The Century Of The Displaced Person,' He Said. 'you Can Never Go Home.

You Paid For Every Second Of Beauty You Managed To Steal.

Once You Get Below The Floor Of Our Personal Identities, We're All Connected. Perhaps That's Why We Can Move Into Others' Lives.

Personal Identity

How Could Anybody Confuse Truth With Beauty, I Thought As I Looked At Him. Truth Came With Sunken Eyes, Bony Or Scarred, Decayed. Its Teeth Were Bad, Its Hair Gray And Unkempt. While Beauty Was Empty As A Gourd, Vain As A Parakeet. But It Had Power. It Smelled Of Musk And Oranges And Made You Close Your Eyes In A Prayer.

I Felt Suddenly Cruel, Like I´d Told Dmall Children There Was No Tooth Fairy, That It Was Just Their Mom Sneaking Into Their Room After They Went To Bed.

The Sound Of Her Laughter Was Sticky As Sap, The Smell Of Night-blooming Jasmine Soft As A Milk Bath.

In A Perverse Way, I Was Glad For The Stitches, Glad It Would Show, That There Would Be Scars. What Was The Point In Just Being Hurt On The Inside? It Should Bloody Well Show.

I Wondered Where He Was Now Whether I Would Ever Hear Him Again. Whether Someone Would Love Him, Someday Show Him What Beauty Mean't.

Love's An Illusion. It's A Dream You Wake Up From With An Enormous Hangover And Net Credit Debt. I'd Rather Have Cash.

She Was Starting To Think There Might Be Such A Thing As Karma - That Repetition - Maybe You Lived Through The Same Thing Over And Over Until You Stopped Caring. Maybe Eventually It Got Less Intense, Until It Was Just Nothing.

A Dependent Clause (a Sentence Fragment Set Off By Commas, Dontcha Know) Helps You Explore Your Story By Moving You Deeper Into The Sentence. It Allows You To Stop And Think Harder About What You've Already Written. Often The Story You're Looking For Is Inside The Sentence. The Dependent Clause Helps You Uncover It.

You Must Find A Boy Your Own Age. Someone Mild And Beautiful To Be Your Lover. Someone Who Will Tremble For Your Touch, Offer You A Marguerite By Its Long Stem With His Eyes Lowered. Someone Whose Fingers Are A Poem.

Poppies Bleed Petals Of Sheer Excess. You And I, This Sweet Battle Ground.

Being In The Library Is So Addictive For Me That I Really Have To Exercise Self-control So I Can Get Some Writing Done At Home.

Nobody Had Forgotten Anything Here. In Berlin, You Had To Wrestle With The Past, You Had To Build On The Ruins, Inside Them. It Wasn't Like America Where We Scraped The Earth Clean, Thinking We Could Start Again Every Time.

My Father Was An Engineer - He Wasn't Literary, Not A Writer Or A Journalist, But He Was One Of The World's Great Readers. Every Two Weeks, He'd Take Me To Our Local Branch Library And Pull Books Off The Shelf For Me, Stacking Them Up In My Arms - 'have You Read This? And This? And This?"

Reading Love Junkie Is Like Watching A Sleepwalker Taking A Stroll On A Freeway. All You Can Do Is Pray. Gorgeously Written, Piercingly Honest.

I'm Always Gratified When I Check Something I've Made Up And Discover That I've Gotten It Right. How Can We Imagine Something That Turns Out To Be True? How Can We Know Things We Couldn't Possibly Know? It Makes Me Wonder About The Existence Of A Collective Unconscious.

Collective Unconscious

She Was Such A Bad Actress. She Never Said Her Lines Rite, It Was Something Perverse In Her Nature. And Wat Was Her Line Anyway?

I Wanted To Tell Her Not To Entertain Despair Like This. Despaire Wasn't A Guest, You Didn't Play Its Favorite Music, Find It A Comfortable Chair. Despair Was The Enemy." -white Oleander

Beauty Was Empty As A Gourd, Vain As A Parakeet. But It Had Power. It Smelled Of Musk And Oranges And Made You Close Your Eyes In A Prayer.

In A Train...smash. In His Arm Her Last...breath.' He Had Loved Her. But He Hated Himself More. Such Suffering, So Much Pain. And He Thought It Made Him Hateful. As If Suffering Was Shameful, Disgusting, As If Pain Were A Crime. Who Can Judge Another Man's Suffering?

And I Realized As I Walked Through The Neighborhood How Each House Could Contain A Completely Different Reality. In A Single Block, There Could Be Fifty Seperate Worlds. Nobody Ever Really Knew What Was Going On Just Next Door.

She Should Think About Her Own Soul, What She Was Going To Do With This Funky Tattered Pond Dank Item. Dark And Stained, A Ruined Thing.

If Sinners Where So Unhappy, Why Would They Prefer Their Suffering? But Now I Knew Why. Without My Wounds, Who Was I?

Her Fingers Moved Among Barnacles And Mussels, Blue-black, Sharp-edged. Neon Red Starfish Were Limp Dalis On The Rocks, Surrounded By Bouquets Of Stinging Anemones And Purple Bursts Of Spiny Sea Urchins.

Her Hatred Glittered Irresistibly. I Could See It, The Jewel, It Was Sapphire, It Was The Cold Lakes Of Norway.

That Kind Of Tenderness Couldn't Be Permitted To Last. You Only Got A Taste, Enough To Know What Perfection Meant, And Then You Paid For It The Rest Of Your Life. Like The Guy Chained To A Rock, Who Stole Fire. The Gods Made An Eagle Eat His Liver For All Eternity. You Paid For Every Second Of Beauty You Managed To Steal.

She’s Not As Pretty As You,” I Said “but She’s A Simpler Girl,” My Mother Whispered.

We Have No Home, She Told Me. I Am Your Home.

Kindness Was The Last Thing She Needed. She Had To Stay In The Icy Place, The Numb Place, And Their Warmth Threatened To Melt Her Just When She Needed The Cold.

The Story Of Her Life. God Gave You Everything Just To Take It Away. Just So You Knew Exactly What You Were Missing.

She Was Not Used To Being Cruel, But He Had Taught Her How.

Inside Every Human Being, There Is Unlimited Time And Space.

I Could Hear The Icy Winds Of Sweden, But He Didn't Seem To Feel The Chill.

Panic Was The Worst Thing. When You Panicked, You Couldn't See Possibilities. Then Came Despair.

Like A Kid Kicked Out Of Class. Humiliated And Free.

His Voice Was Cloves And Nightingales, It Took Us To Spice Markets In The Celebs, We Drifted With Him On A Houseboat Beyond The Coral Sea. We Were Like Cobras Following A Reed Flute.

I Watched Her For A Long Time, Memorizing Her Shoulders, Her Long-legged Gait. This Was How Girls Left. They Packed Up Their Suitcases And Walked Away In High Heels. They Pretended They Weren't Crying, That It Wasn't The Worst Day Of Their Lives. That They Didn't Want Their Mothers To Come Running After Them, Begging Their Forgiveness, That They Wouldn't Have Gone Down On Their Knees And Thanked God If They Could Stay.

This Is What Happens When You Fall In Love. You're Looking At A Natural Disaster.

Falling In Love

At Every Moment, Each Instrument Knew What To Play. Its Little Bit. But None Could See The Whole Thing Like This, All At Once, Only Its Own Part. Just Like Life. Each Person Was Like A Line Of Music, But Nobody Knew What The Symphony Sounded Like. Only The Conductor Had The Whole Score.

Here, Here Is My Dark World. You Carry It For A Change. Im Out

...you Know The Mistrust Of Heights Is The Mistrust Of Self, You Don't Know Whether You're Going To Jump.

I Imagined My Soul Taking In These Words Like Silicated Water In The Petrified Forest, Turning My Wood To Patterned Agate. I Liked It When My Mother Shaped Me This Way. I Thought Clay Must Feel Happy In The Good Potter's Hand.

She’s Never Where She Is,' I Said. 'she’s Only Inside Her Head.

I've Been Depressed Many Times In My Life. But Under It All I'm An Optimist.

She Was Sitting Cross-legged On Her Bed In Her White Kimono, Writing In A Notebook With An Ink Pen She Dipped In A Bottle. 'never Let A Man Stay The Night,' She Told Me. 'dawn Has A Way Of Casting A Pall On Any Night Magic.' The Night Magic Sounded Lovely. Someday I Would Have Lovers And Write A Poem After.

There Is No God, There Is Only What You Want.

There Is No God

But I Knew One More Thing. That People W Ho Denied Who They Were Or Where They Had Been Were In The Greatest Danger.

Most People Write The Same Sentence Over And Over Again. The Same Number Of Words-say, 8-10, Or 10-12. The Same Sentence Structure. Try To Become Stretchy-if You Generally Write 8 Words, Throw A 20 Word Sentence In There, And A Few Three-word Shorties. If You're Generally A 20 Word Writer, Make Sure You Throw In Some Threes, Fivers And Sevens, Just To Keep The Reader From Going Crosseyed.

In Our Exterior Life, We Can Be Only One Person. But In Our Imagination, We Can Be Anyone, Anywhere.

I Wanted To Hear What She Was Saying. I Wanted To Smell That Burnt Midnight Again, I Wanted To Feel That Wind. It Was A Secret Wanting, Like A Song I Couldn't Stop Humming, Or Loving Someone I Could Never Have. No Matter Where I Went, My Compass Pointed West. I Would Always Know What Time It Was In California.

She Would Buy Magic Every Day Of The Week. Love Me, That Face Said. I'm So Lonely, So Desperate. I'll Give You Whatever You Want.

They Say Drugs Are Not The Answer, But Really, What Is The Question?

Who Was I, Really? I Was The Sole Occupant Of My Mother's Totalitarian State, My Own Personal History Rewritten To Fit The Story She Was Telling That Day. There Were So Many Missing Pieces. I Was Starting To Find Some Of Them, Working My Way Upriver, Collecting A Secret Cache Of Broken Memories In A Shoebox.

History Only Existed In The Human Mind, Subject To Endless Revision. 'each Man Kills The Thing He Loves'-oscar Wilde. You Kill It Before It Kills You, But He Was Wrong. You Killed It By Accident. Thinking You Were Doing Something Else. Shattering, When All You Wanted To Do Was Keep It Safe.

I Hated Labels Anyway. People Didn't Fit In Slots--prostitute, Housewife, Saint--like Sorting The Mail. We Were So Mutable, Fluid With Fear And Desire, Ideals And Angles, Changeable As Water.

I Thought Clay Must Feel Happy In The Good Potter's Hand.

A Cliché Is Like A Coin That Has Been Handled Too Much. Once Language Has Been Overly Handled, It No Longer Leaves A Clear Imprint.

For She Is My Love, And Other Women Are But Big Bodies Of Flame.

These People Picked You Up And Played With You And Then Left You Lying In The Rain

The Best You'll Ever Do Is To Understand Yourself, Know What It Is That You Want, And Not Let The Cattle Stand In Your Way.

The Phoenix Must Burn To Emerge.

No Matter How Unappealing, Each Of Them Imagines He Is Somehow Worthy.

My Loneliness Tasted Like Pennies.

She Laughed So Easily When She Was Happy. But Also When She Was Sad.

When Most People Looked At Josie Tyrell, They Only Saw A Certain Collection Of Bones, A Selection Of Forms Filling Space. But Michael Saw Past The Mouth And The Eyes, The Architecture Of The Body, Her Fleshly Masquerade. Other Boys Were Happy Enough To Enjoy The Show, They Just Wanted To Be Entertained In The Body's Shadow Theater. But Michael Had To Come Backstage. He Went Down Into The Mines, Into The Dark, And Brought Up The Gold, Your New Self, A Better Self. But What Good Was It If He Was Just Going To Leave Her Behind?

How Easy I Was. Like A Limpet I Attached Myself To Anything, Anyone Who Showed Me The Least Attention.

Oleander Time, She Said. Lovers Who Kill Each Other Now Will Blame It On The Wind.

I Felt Like Time Was A Great Sea, And I Was Floating On The Back Of A Turtle, And No Sails Broke The Horizon.

What Is A Scene? A) A Scene Starts And Ends In One Place At One Time (the Aristotelian Unities Of Time And Place-this Stuff Goes Waaaayyyy Back). B) A Scene Starts In One Place Emotionally And Ends In Another Place Emotionally. Starts Angry, Ends Embarrassed. Starts Lovestruck, Ends Disgusted. C) Something Happens In A Scene, Whereby The Character Cannot Go Back To The Way Things Were Before. Make Sure To Finish A Scene Before You Go On To The Next. Make Something Happen.

It's Such A Liability To Love Another Person.

I Usually Start With Something That Has Some Energy, Like A Compressed Character Or A Situation That's Wound Up Like A Spring. Then All I Have To Do Is Let It Go, Let Its Energy Carry The Story. And That May Not Turn Out To Be The Beginning Of The Book.

They Dream Of Men With Gentle Hands, Eloquent With Tenderness, Fingers That Brushed Along A Cheek, That Outlined Open Lips In The Lovers' Braille. Hands That Sculpted Sweetness From Sullen Flesh, That Traced Breast And Ignited Hips, Opening, Kneading. Flesh Becomes Bread In The Heat Of Those Hands, Braided And Rising.

Whenever She Turned Her Steep Focus To Me, I Felt The Warmth That Flowers Must Feel When They Bloom Through The Snow, Under The First Concentrated Rays Of The Sun.

It's Their Skins I'm Peeling," She Said. "the Skins Of The Insipid Scribblers, Which I Graft To The Page, Creating Monsters Of Meaninglessness.

Aquamarines Grew With Emeralds, Claire Told Me. But Emeralds Were Fragile And Always Broke Into Smaller Pieces, While Aquamarines Were Stronger, Grew In Huge Crystals Without Any Trouble, So They Weren't Worth As Much. It Was The Emerald That Didn't Break That Was The Really Valuable Thing.

The Night Crackled ... Everything Had Turned To Static Electricity In The Heat. I Combed My Hair To Watch The Sparks Fly From The Ends.

Only Peons Made Excusses For Themselves She Taught Me. Never Apologize, Never Explain.

A Novel Is Like A Dream In Which Everyone Is You. They’re All Parts Of Yourself.

He Reminded Me Of Someone Who Put Your Fingers In The Door And Smiled And Talked To You While He Smashed Them.

It Wasn't Awful To Be Dead. The Stillness Would Almost Be A Relief. She Wouldn't Want Pain, She Wouldn't Want To Be Wounded Or Mutilated. She Could Never Shoot Herself Or Jump Off A Building. But Being Dead Wasn't Unthinkable.

Who Can Judge Another Man's Suffering?

Love Could Never Bloom In A Concrete Block Room.

You Can't Shape Me Anymore. I Am The Uncontrolled Element, The Random Act. I Am Forward Movement In Time. You Think You Can See Me? Then Tell Me, Who Am I? You Don't Know.

Never Apologize. Never Explain.

Beauty Was Deceptive. I Would Rather Wear My Pain, My Ugliness. I Was Torn And Stitched. I Was A Strip Mine, And They Would Just Have To Look. I Hoped I Made Them Sick. I Hoped They Saw Me In Their Dreams.

I Felt Beautiful But Also Interrupted. I Wasn't Used To Being So Complicated.

I Couldn't Imagine Owning Beauty Like My Mothers. I Wouldn't Dare.

Whenever She Thought She Could Not Feel More Alone, The Universe Peeled Back Another Layer Of Darkness.

He Hated Crowds, Never Liked Punk. He Couldn't Handle The Nakedness Of The Rage -his Own So Sophisticated And Finely Tuned. He Could Never See The Similarity Between Himself And Donnie Draino Screaming Into A Mic.

 loneliness Is The Human Condition. Cultivate It. The Way It Tunnels Into You Allows Your Soul Room To Grow. Never Expect To Outgrow Loneliness. Never Hope To Find People Who Will Understand You, Someone To Fill That Space. An Intelligent, Sensitive Person Is The Exception, The Very Great Exception. If You Expect To Find People Who Will Understand You, You Will Grow Murderous With Disappointment. The Best You'll Ever Do Is To Understand Yourself, Know What It Is That You Want, And Not Let The Cattle Stand In Your Way.

The Decor Bowled Me Over. Everywhere I Looked, There Was Something More To See. Botanical Prints, A Cross Section Of Pomegranates, A Passionflower Vine And Its Fruit. Stacks Of Thick Books On Art And Design And A Collection Of Glass Paperweights Filled The Coffee Table. It Was Enormously Beautiful, A Sensibility I'd Never Encountered Anywhere, A Relaxed Luxury. I Could Feel My Mother's Contemptuous Gaze Falling On The Cluttered Surfaces, But I Was Tired Of Three White Flowers In A Glass Vase. There Was More To Life Than That.

To Know I Was Beautiful In His Eyes Made Me Beautiful.

Always Learn Poems By Heart. They Have To Become The Marrow In Your Bones. Like Fluoride In The Water, They'll Make Your Soul Impervious To The World's Soft Decay.

...the Men Eyed Her With The Automatic Mix Of Curiosity, Lust, And Aesthetic Judgment They Always Gave Young Women, Subject To Object, The Way You'd Stare At An Animal. She Pretended Not To Notice. To Remind Them She Was A Person Was Too Much Effort. Objects Bore No Guilt.

As A Person With Terrible Handwriting, I Love The Computer. I've Waited All My Life For The Computer.

I Was Tired Of Men. Hanging In Doorways, Standing Too Close, Men Who Made You Love Them Then Changed Their Minds.

Her Scruffy Innoscense To Impregnate With His Dreams. Reason Was Seductive, It Gave The Appearance Of Truth

I Wondered Why It Had To Be So Poisonous. Oleanders Could Live Through Anything, They Could Stand Heat, Drought, Neglect, And Put Out Thousands Of Waxy Blooms. So What Did They Need Poison For? Couldn't They Just Be Bitter? They Weren't Like Rattlesnakes, They Didn't Even Eat What They Killed. The Way She Boiled It Down, Distilled It, Like Her Hatred. Maybe It Was A Poison In The Soil, Something About L.a., The Hatred, The Callousness, Something We Didn't Want To Think About, That The Plant Concentrated In Its Tissues. Maybe It Wasn't A Source Of Poison, But Just Another Victim.

Darkness Coiled Between What He Wanted Them To Believe And The Self He Despised. It Only Made Him More Alone. How Could You Save Someone When He Didn't Let You Kno Him? What A Waste. The Beauty He Murdered In This Place. He Could Never See What He Had, Only What He Failed To Achieve.

She Kissed Me On The Mouth. Her Mouth Tasted Like Iced Coffee And Cardamom, And I Was Overwhelmed By The Taste, Her Hot Skin And The Smell Of Unwashed Hair. I Was Confused, But Not Unwilling. I Would Have Let Her Do Anything To Me.

I Closed My Eyes To Watch Tiny Dancers Like Jeweled Birds Cross The Dark Screen Of My Eyelids.

Depression, Suffering And Anger Are All Part Of Being Human.

Their Love As A Dragonfly, Skimming Over Echo Park, Stoppin To Visit The Lotus. Eating Dreams And Drinking Blue Sky.

Don't Turn Over The Rocks If You Don't Want To See The Pale Creatures Who Live Under Them.

Women Always Put Men First. That's How Everything Got So Screwed Up.

Who Are You? The Band Sang. I Tried To Remember But I Really Couldn't Say.

After All The Fears, The Warnings, After All, A Woman's Mistakes Are Different From A Girl's. They Are Written By Fire On Stone. They Are A Trait And Not An Error.

What Was Beauty Unless You Intended To Use It, Like A Hammer, Or A Key? It Was Just Something For Other People To Use And Admire, Or Envy, Despise. To Nail Their Dreams Onto Like A Picture Hanger On A Blank Wall. And So Many Girls Saying, Use Me, Dream Me.

When I Start Writing, My Unconscious, My Conflicts, My Thoughts All Start To Come Up. So For Me, Writing Is An Exploration. I Never Know How My Stories Will End.

It Was Her First Book, An Indigo Cover With A Silver Moonflower, An Art Nouveau Flower, I Traced My Finger Along The Silver Line Like Smoke, Whiplash Curves. ... I Touched The Pages Her Hands Touched, I Pressed Them To My Lips, The Soft Thick Old Paper, Yellow Now, Fragile As Skin. I Stuck My Nose Between The Bindings And Smelled All The Readings She Had Given, The Smell Of Unfiltered Cigarettes And The Espresso Machine, Beaches And Incense And Whispered Words In The Night. I Could Hear Her Voice Rising From The Pages. The Cover Curled Outward Like Sails.

I'm A Fish Swimming By...catch Me If You Want Me.

When I Read, I Want To Be Fully Transported To Another Place. I Want To Feel Things, Smell Things.

I Was Always Mortified.didn't They Know They Were Tying Thier Mothers To The Ground? Weren't Chains Ashamed Of Their Prisoners?

Love Is A Check, That Can Be Forged, That Can Be Cashed. Love Is A Payment That Comes Due.

Girls Were Born Knowing How Destructive The Truth Could Be. They Learned To Hold It In, Tamp It Down, Like Gunpowder In An Old Fashioned Gun. Then It Exploded In Your Face On A November Day In The Rain.

I Wandered Through The Stacks, Running My Hands Along The Spines Of The Books On The Shelves, They Reminded Me Of Cultured Or Opinionated Guests At A Wonderful Party, Whispering To Each Other.

Purification In Fire. Public Cremation

A Cliche Is Everything You've Ever Heard Of.

I'm Always Looking For Something New And Interesting To Say. And It Can't Be Something I'm Directly Experiencing.

As An Artist, You Can Never Get What You Want. What You Do Never Approaches What You Want It To Be.

No Matter Where I Was, My Compass Pointed West. I Would Always Know What Time It Was In California.

I Use My Fiction To Explore My Own Unconscious Issues. I Usually Don't Even Know What's Going On With Me Until I'm Writing.

Don't Attach Yourself To Anyone Who Shows You The Least Bit Of Attention Because You're Lonely. Lonliness Is The Human Condition. No One Is Ever Going To Fill That Space. The Best Thing You Can Do It Know Yourself... Know What You Want.

Now I Wish She'd Never Broken Any Of Her Rules. I Understood Why She Held To Them So Hard. Once You Broke The First One, They All Broke, One By One, Like Firecrackers Exploding In Your Face In A Parking Lot On The Fourth Of July.

We Strive For Beauty And Balance, The Sensual Over The Sentimental.

Without My Wounds, Who Was I? My Scars Were My Face, My Past Was My Life.

We Parked In Back And Walked Down The Stairs With Their Polished Brass Railings, Past The Old-fashioned Kitchen. We Could See The Chefs Cooking. It Smelled Like Stew, Or Meat Loaf, The Way Time Should Smell, Solid And Nourishing.

How Can I Shed Tears For A Man I Should Never Have Allowed To Touch Me In Any Way?

To Make Films, You Have To Have Boundless Energy; You Have To Work And Play With Others Really, Really Well, And I'm Really A More Contemplative Kind Of Person. I Like To Sit At Home And Think, A Lot.

The Nearest I'd Come To Feeling Anything Like God Was The Plan Blue Cloudless Sky And A Certain Silence, But How Do You Pray To That?

I Use My Fiction To Explore My Own Unconscious Issues. I Usually Don't Even Know What's Going On With Me Until I'm Writing. That Doesn't Mean My Books Are Autobiographical.

When You're A Little Kid, You Are Small, Your Life Is Small - And You're Terrifically Aware Of That. But When You Read, You Can Ride Arabian Horses Across The Desert, You Can Be A Dogsledder.

One Can Bear Anything. The Pain We Cannot Bear Will Kill Us Outright.

I Nodded. A Man's World. But What Did It Mean? That Men Whistled And Stared And Yelled Things At You, And You Had To Take It, Or You Get Raped Or Beat Up? A Man's World Meant Places Men Could Go But Not Women. It Meant They Had More Money,and Didn't Have Kids, Not The Way Women Did, To Look After Every Second. And It Meant That Women Loved Them More Than They Loved The Women, That They Could Want Something With All Their Hearts, And Then Not.

Remember...we Don't See Objects, We See Light. [...] Light Can Do Anything Water Can Do--flow, Wash, Trickle. It Can Do Anything An Artist Can Do--paint, Burnish, Carve. Candlelight Falls, Licks A Face. There Is Always Light In A Room.

I'm Incredibly Restless. I Read A Lot Of Poetry. I Also Find Myself Reading The First 20 Pages Of Everything, Looking For Something. And You Know What? I'm Usually Looking For The Book I'm Writing. And It's Not Out There!

I Emitted Some Civetlike Female Stink, A Distinct Perfume Of Sexual Wanting, That He Had Followed To Find Me Here In The Dark.

And If There Is No God? You Act As If There Is, And It's The Same Thing.

There Is No God

What Can She Possibly Teach You, Twenty Seven Names For Tears?

She Wanted To Wake Up Like Dorothy And See Michael's Face Peering Over The Side Of The Bed, Laughing. Why, You Just Hit Your Head. But It Was Not A Dream And There Was No Kansas And He Was Never Coming Back.

What Can I Say About Life? Do I Praise It For Letting You Live, Or Damn It For Allowing The Rest?

I Almost Said, You're Not Broken, You're Just Going Through Something. But I Couldn't. She Knew. There Was Something Terribly Wrong With Her, All The Way Inside. She Was Like A Big Diamond With A Dead Spot In The Middle. I Was Supposed To Breathe Life Into That Dead Spot, But It Hadn't Worked.

I Took My Mother's Knife And Played Johnny Johnny Johnny On The Playhouse Floor. I Was Drunk, Stabbed Myself Every Few Throws. I Held My Hand Up And There Was Satisfaction At Seeing My Blood, The Way There Was When I Saw The Red Gouges Onmy Face That People Stared At And Turned Away. They Were Thinking I Was Beautiful, But They Were Wrong, Now They Could See How Ugly And Mutilated I Was.

Many Women Get Involved With A Man That You Pretty Much Know Isn't Suitable And You're Kind Of Breaking Your Rules, But He's Attractive In Some Unknown Way. And Then He Doesn't Even Realize What A Sacrifice You're Making By Being With Him And He Dumps You!

What Happened To A Dream Without A Dreamer?

Loneliness Is The Human Condition. Cultivate It. The Way It Tunnels Into You Allows Your Soul Room To Grow.

That Was What She Really Wanted. To Forget So Thoroughly She'd Never Have Another Memory Again, The Bitter So Bitter You Gave Up The Sweet.

There Used To Be A Category Called Women's Fiction - Meaning Not Too Rude, Not Too Much Sex, A Bit Domestic And Internal. Women Have Changed So Much. We're So Varied. And We've Become More Interested In The Same Varied Experience In Fiction.

How Vast Was A Human Being's Capacity For Suffering. The Only Thing You Could Do Was Stand In Awe Of It. It Wasn't A Question Of Survival At All. It Was The Fullness Of It, How Much Could You Hold, How Much Could You Care.

Wasn't That The Way It Always Was? You Didn't Know, You Couldn't Tell, You Just Let It Happen... Perhaps They Didn't Know Themselves. Sometimes The Line Was Very Fine.

My Hatred Gives Me Strength.

...i Was Tired Of Men. Hanging In Doorways, Standing Too Close, Their Smell Of Beer Or Fifteen-year-old Whiskey. Men Who Didn't Come To The Emergency Room With You, Men Who Left On Christmas Eve. Men Who Slammed The Security Gates, Who Made You Love Them And Then Changed Their Minds.

I Tried Writing Fiction As A Little Kid, But Had A Teacher Humiliate Me, So Didn't Write Again Until I Was A Senior In College.

Memory Is The Fourth Dimension To Any Landscape.

Just Because A Poet Said Something Didn’t Mean It Was True, Only That It Sounded Good.

I Felt Like An Undeveloped Photograph That He Was Printing, My Image Rising To The Surface Under His Gaze.

I Think That Oprah's On A Mission To Improve The Lives Of The Average American In Various Ways. And One Of Them Is To Bring Literature To People Who Would Normally Not Be Quite As Demanding In Their Reading Tastes, To Show Them Writing That Can Be More Than Just Entertainment.

If This Was A Sandalwood Pyre She Would Have Thrown Herself In And This Paper She'd Become Would Have Caught Fire And She And Him Could Sail Away Like Two Birds.

A Cliche Is Like A Coin That Has Been Handled Too Much. Once Language Has Been Overly Handled, It No Longer Leaves A Clear Imprint.

So Much Wanting And Longing, Clutching, Desiring, Passion And Hatred And Terrible Need. Here, Death Was Suitable, There Was Room For It, The Grip Of Life's Relentless Urges Slackened, Replaced By This Icy Simplicity. This Wasnt Her Death. It Was His. That Was The Sad And Honest Truth. Though It Would Stay With Her, It Would Be More Like A Black Onyx Heart On A Silver Chain, Worn Privately, Under Her Clothes, Close To Her Body, All Her Life. The Guilt, The Beauty, Everything. It Wasnt Over, It Had Only Begun. Well Ok Then, Okay.

It Was Only Natural To Want To Destroy Something You Could Never Have.

Writing Mirrors The Interior Self. You Know, Any Book Is Like The Perfect Blueprint Of The Psyche Of The Author.

The Word Rattled In My Head Like Rocks In An Oatmeal Box.

I Thought How Tenuous The Links Were Between Mother And Children Between Friends Family Things You Think Are Eternal. Everything Could Be Lost More Easily Than Anyone Could Imagine.

Always Tell Us Where We Are. And Don't Just Tell Us Where Something Is, Make It Pay Off. Use Description Of Landscape To Help You Establish The Emotional Tone Of The Scene. Keep Notes Of How Other Authors Establish Mood And Foreshadow Events By Describing The World Around The Character. Look At The Openings Of Fitzgerald Stories, And Graham Greene, They're Great At This.

Although She Was Giddy With Exhaustion, Sleep Was A Lover Who Refused To Be Touched.

I Took The Volume To A Table, Opened Its Soft, Ivory Pages... And Fell Into It As Into A Pool During Dry Season.

I Wish My Life Could Be Like That, Knotted Up So That Even If Something Broke, The Whole Thing Wouldn't Come Apart.

If I Get Ideas Independently Of The Act Of Writing, They Never Really Fit. So For Me, There's No Hanging Out, Waiting For Inspiration.

The Stupid Things You Say In The Rain, That Can't Ever Be Washed Away.

A Womans Mistakes Are Different From A Girls

Echo, The Death Of A Sound That Had Nowhere To Go But To Come Back.

When You Started Thinking It Was Easy, You Were Forgetting What It Cost.

She Was A Beautiful Woman Dragging A Crippled Foot And I Was That Foot. I Was Bricks Sewn Into The Hem Of Her Clothes, I Was A Steel Dress

I Imagined Kandinsky's Mind, Spread Out All Over The World, And Then Gathered Together. Everyone Having Only A Piece Of The Puzzle. Only In A Show Like This Could You See The Complete Picture, Stack The Pieces Up, Hold Them To The Light, See How It All Fit Together. It Made Me Hopeful, Like Someday My Life Would Make Sense Too, If I Could Just Hold All The Pieces Together At The Same Time.

It's Not That He Was Going Nowhere, It's That He'd Already Arrived.

Death Like A Lover, Caressing Him, Promising Him Peace, Running Its Fingers Through His Hair, Its Tongue In His Ear. She Put Her Own Two Fingers In Her Mouth. Im So Sorry. And Pulled The Trigger

My House Is Modern, But I Like My Writing Room To Be Old Fashioned. I Write On A Little Wooden Secretary Desk.

And I Thought, There Was No God, There Was Only What You Wanted.

Most People Use Twenty Verbs To Describe Everything From A Run In Their Stocking To The Explosion Of An Atomic Bomb. You Know The Ones: Was, Did, Had, Made, Went, Looked... One-size-fits-all Looks Like Crap On Anyone. Sew Yourself A Custom Made Suit. Pick A Better Verb. Challenge All Those Verbs To Really Lift Some Weight For You.

Life Should Always Be Like This. ... Like Lingering Over A Good Meal.

I Thought Of My Mother As Queen Christina, Cool And Sad, Eyes Trained On Some Distant Horizon. That Was Where She Belonged, In Furs And Palaces Of Rare Treasures, Fireplaces Large Enough To Roast A Reindeer, Ships Of Swedish Maple.

The Poets Are The Standard Bearers Of Language. Their Work Lives Or Dies Word By Word. When I Write And Can Hear A Clunky Sentence, I Try To Write Up To The Poetry That I Have Recited Beforehand.

A Fish Has No Concept Of Water.

Dawn Tinted The Darkness Like Water Ink.

Your Protagonist Is Your Reader’s Portal Into The Story. The More Observant He Or She Can Be, The More Vivid Will Be The World You’re Creating. They Don’t Have To Be Super-educated, They Just Have To Be Mentally Active. Keep Them Looking, Thinking, Wondering, Remembering.

Don't Hoard The Past. Don't Cherish Anything. Burn It. The Artist Is The Phoenix Who Burns To Emerge.

A Couple Of Times, I Could Have Turned A Trick. But I Didn't Want To Start. I Knew How It Would Play. When You Started Thinking It Was Easy, You Were Forgetting What It Cost.

Dawn Has A Way Of Casting A Pall On Any Night Magic.

At Least If You Were Ignorant You Could Do Wat You Wanted. You Had No Idea Wat Had Been Acheived In The Past. You Were Free Instead Of Chewed At By Bleeding Impotence, Dissolved Away Like A Pearl In Acid

How Right That The Body Changed Over Time, Becoming A Gallery Of Scars, A Canvas Of Experience, A Testament To Life And One's Capacity To Endure It.

But That Was The Thing About Zero. Its Weakness. Even If Zero Had Taken Over The Entire Universe, The Biggest Fascist Of All, One Tiny Gesture Could Deny It. One Footprint, One Atom. You Didn't Have To Be A Genius. You Didn't Even Have To Know That Was What You Were Doing. You Made A Mark. You Changed Something. It Said, "a Human Being Passed Here." And Changed Zero To One.

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