The Silkworm

"...Writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels."

"...Writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels."

"The whole world's writing novels, but nobody's reading them."

“La ficción abarca terrenos poco definidos. Si cuentas la verdad de forma grotesca…no podría ser literalmente cierto.”

“Los escritores son así. Unos chiflados”

“De la maraña de pruebas inconexas empezaba a surgir una imagen clara, una imagen descarnada y aterradora: la de una mente calculadora y brillante, pero tremendamente trastornada, dominada por la obsesion, la ira y la violencia.”

"Ha, ha, ha, thou entanglest thyself in thine own work like a silkworm, John Webster" ~ The White Devil

"Ha, ha, ha, thou entanglest thyself in thine own work like a silkworm, John Webster" ~ The White Devil

"Phallus impudicus is actually the proper name for a toadstool called stinkhorn. Apparently they smell vile and…well,” she giggled some more, “they look like rotting knobs. Classic Owen: dirty names and everyone with their bits out.”

"...he was seen for what he was: a man with a dirty imagination and an interesting style who had barely an idea that wasn’t pornographic. Some authors,” said Fancourt, “have only one good book in them. That was Owen. He shot his bolt—an expression he would have approved of—with Hobart’s Sin. Everything after that was pointless rehashes.”

"I never denied that Owen could write, you know, it was just that he was never able to dredge up anything profound or interesting to write about. It’s a surprisingly common phenomenon. But with Bombyx Mori he found his subject at last, didn’t he? Everybody hates me, everyone’s against me, I’m a genius and nobody can see it. The result is grotesque and comic, it reeks of bitterness and self-pity, but it has an undeniable fascination. And the language,” said Fancourt, with the most enthusiasm he had so far brought to the discussion, “is admirable. Some passages are among the best things he ever wrote.”

"...writers are a savage breed, Mr. Strike. If you want life-long friendship and selfless camaraderie, join the army and learn to kill. If you want a lifetime of temporary alliances with peers who will glory in your every failure, write novels."

"Hard to remember these days that there was a time you had to wait for the ink and paper reviews to see your work excoriated. With the invention of the internet, any subliterate cretin can be Michiko Kakutani. "

“The whole world’s writing novels, but nobody’s reading them.”