Will Self

A creative life cannot be sustained by approval any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea for ever.

Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in ... the edit.

An English gentleman never shines his shoes, but then nor does a lazy bastard.

I'm going to end up like one of those old weirdos who lives in a network of tunnels burrowed through trash - yet I do not fear this.

You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.

Jill Ker Conway

An adult life...is a slowly emerging design, with shifting components, occasional dramatic disruptions, and fresh creative arrangements.

Her ideas were expressions of her inability to accept her own personal tragedy and her quest for some certainty on which she could rest a troubled spirit. Her her lack of education was a real handicap, because she had no historical or philosophical perspective from which to analyze her own experience of grief and loss. Because we lived in a cultural wasteland of suburbia, there were no schools or evening classes she might have attended which could offer an intellectually disciplined approach to her quest. Nor were there any churches which might have offered comfort through the beauty of their liturgy.

I learned that time manages the most painful partings for us. One has only to set the date, buy the ticket, and let the earth, sun, and moon make their passages through the sky, until inexorable time carries us with it to the moment of parting.

Edwidge Danticat

Love is like the rain. It comes in a drizzle sometimes. Then it starts pouring and if you're not careful it will drown you.

No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness.

Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.

Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. ... Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.

When you write ,it's like braiding your hair. Taking a handful of coarse unruly strands and attempting to bring then unity

She told me about a group of people in Guinea who carry the sky on their heads. They are the people of Creation. Strong, tall, and mighty people who can bear anything. Their Maker, she said, gives them the sky to carry because they are strong. These people do not know who they are, but if you see a lot of trouble in your life, it is because you were chosen to carry part of the sky on your head.

'It's not easy to start over in a new place,' he said. 'Exile is not for everyone. Someone has to stay behind, to receive the letters and greet family members when they come back.

Amy Harmon

If God made all our faces, did he laugh when he made me?
Does he make the legs that cannot walk and eyes that cannot see?
Does he curl the hair upon my head 'til it rebels in wild defiance?
Does he close the ears of a deaf man to make him more reliant?
Is the way I look a coincidence or just a twist of fate?
If he made me this way, is it okay, to blame him for the things I hate?
For the flaws that seem to worsen every time I see a mirror,For the ugliness I see in me, for the loathing and the fear.
Does he sculpt us for his pleasure, for a reason I can't see?
If God makes all our faces, did he laugh when he made me?

Everybody is a main character to someone...

Books allow you to be whoever you want to be, to escape yourself for a while.

I will spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy, and when you get tired of looking at me, I promise I’ll sing.

You loved ferris wheels more than roller coasters because life shouldn’t be lived at full speed, but in anticipation and appreciation.

Death is easy. Living is the hard part.

I would rather be lost with you than alone without you.

Victory is in the battle.

It's hard to come to terms with the fact that you aren't going to be loved the way you want to be loved.

Wendy Higgins

He was smoking hot. As in H-O-T-T, hott. I’d never understood until that moment why girls insisted on adding an extra t. This guy was extra-t-worthy.

Good gracious, he was sexy—a word that had not existed in my personal vocabulary until that moment. This guy was sexy like it was his job or something.

We have to face difficulties to find out what our true strengths are. How we come back from failure is a very valuable test.

The beauty of poetry is that it can mean different things to different people at different times.

Seriously,” I whispered, unable to look away. “You're doing the bedroom-eyes thing again.

I was more myself with you during those three days than I’ve ever been with anyone in my life. It’d be easier if I could be fake with you, but you bring out everything in me, little Ann. All of it.

Kirsty Moseley

She was the only thing I needed. If everything else went away tomorrow, the big house, all the cars, the money, I wouldn't care. As long as I still got to hold her every night, I would still be the luckiest guy in the world.

It’s always been you; it’ll always be you, Angel.

He said in a deadly serious tone, ‘Momma, am I dead?’ And I said ‘no honey, you’re not dead’, and he shook his head, looking all confused about something. Then he pointed to you dancing and said, ‘if I’m not dead, then why is there an Angel in our house?

I thought maybe if I met someone else that i'd be able to stop thinking about you, but it didn't work. nothing works. when i'm with them, I wish it was you. when they laugh or talk, I can't help but compare them to your voice or your laugh. it's always been you; it'll always be you, angel.

Dejan Stojanovi

My feelings are too loud for words and too shy for the world.

To hide feelings when you are near crying is the secret of dignity.

It is beautiful to express love and even more beautiful to feel it

I am the shore and the ocean, awaiting myself on both sides.

The most complicated skill is to be simple.

For a moment at least, be a smile on someone else’s face.

To hear never-heard sounds, 
To see never-seen colors and shapes, 
To try to understand the imperceptible 
Power pervading the world; 
To fly and find pure ethereal substances 
That are not of matter 
But of that invisible soul pervading reality. 
To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul; 
To be a lantern in the darkness 
Or an umbrella in a stormy day; 
To feel much more than know. 
To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain; 
To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon; 
To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves; 
To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets 
Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching. 
To be a smile on the face of a woman 
And shine in her memory 
As a moment saved without planning

Alex Flinn

Just because something is beautiful doesn´t mean it´s good.

Those who do not know how to see the precious things in life will never be happy.

You shouldn't miss someone who don't miss you, right?

Every girl pretends she is a princess at one point, no matter how little her life is like that.

Maybe we judge people too much by their looks because it's easier than seeing what's really important.

A beautiful thing is precious, no matter the price. Those who do not know how to see the precious things in life will never be happy...”

People make such a big deal about looks, but after a while, when you know someone, you don't even notice anymore...

Laurell K. Hamilton

There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.

I will love you always. When this red hair is white, I will still love you. When the smooth softness of youth is replaced by the delicate softness of age, I will still want to touch your skin. When your face is full of the lines of every smile you have ever smiled, of every surprise I have seen flash through your eyes, when every tear you have ever cried has left its mark upon your face,I will treasure you all the more, because I was there to see it all. I will share your life with you, Meredith, and I will love you until the last breath leaves your body or mine.

There comes a point when you either embrace who and what you are, or condemn yourself to be miserable all your days. Other people will try to make you miserable; don't help them by doing the job yourself.

Love sucks. Sometimes it feels good. Sometimes it's just another way to bleed.

Never trust people who smile constantly. They're either selling something or not very bright.

Stupidity isn't punishable by death. If it was, there would be a hell of a population drop.

My father had taught me to be nice first, because you can always be mean later, but once you've been mean to someone, they won't believe the nice anymore. So be nice, be nice, until it's time to stop being nice, then destroy them.

When in doubt, ignore and be horribly unimpressed.

Neither love nor evil conquers all, but evil cheats more.

Bernhard Schlink

There's no need to talk about it, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.

I'm not frightened. I'm not frightened of anything. The more I suffer, the more I love. Danger will only increase my love. It will sharpen it, forgive its vice. I will be the only angel you need. You will leave life even more beautiful than you entered it. Heaven will take you back and look at you and say: Only one thing can make a soul complete and that thing is love.”

Now to escape involves not just running away, but arriving somewhere.

Is this what sadness is all about? Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that was not kept?

I thought that if the right time gets missed, if one has refused or been refused something for too long, it's too late, even if it is finally tackled with energy and received with joy. Or is there no such thing as "too late"? Is there only "late," and is "late" always better than "never"? I don't know.