"It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over."
— Edna St. Vincent Millay

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place. "
— GB Shaw

"We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
"
— Toni Morrison

"All language is but a poor translation."
— Franz Kafka

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."
— Jane Austen

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
— Anaïs Nin

"I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?"
— Hermann Hesse

"The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help."
— Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry)

"book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. it is not a hobby. those who do it must do it. those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind."
— Jeanette Winterson

"He wrote on a piece of paper with his pencil.
Psychosis: out of touch with reality.
Since then, I have been trying to find out what reality is, so that I can touch it."
— Jeanette Winterson

"And I could tell she loved him. And although she was an evil fungus growing on 200 pounds of irritated lard, her feelings were real."
— Lynda Barry

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it."
— Anaïs Nin

"We don’t create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay."
— Lynda Barry

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. "
— Philip K. Dick

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
— Flannery O'Connor

"The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd."
— Flannery O'Connor (Flannery O'Connor : Collected Works : Wise Blood / A Good Man Is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear It Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays & Letters)

"Total nonretention has kept my education from being a burden to me."
— Flannery O'Connor