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This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can’t possibly be true. But when I see others walking with confidence down the sidewalk, as though they are free completely from terror, I realize I don’t know how others are. So much of life seems speculation.
But the books brought me things. This is my point. They made me feel less alone. This is my point. And I thought: I will write and people will not feel so alone!
Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me.
“It’s not my job to make readers know what’s a narrative voice and not the private view of the author,” and that alone made me glad I had come. The librarian seemed unable to understand. “What do you mean?” he kept saying, and she only repeated what she had said before. He said, “What is your job as a writer of fiction?” And she said that her job as a writer of fiction was to report on the human condition, to tell us who we are and what we think and what we do.
I said nothing because I was doing what I have done most of my life, which is to cover for the mistakes of others when they don’t know they have embarrassed themselves.
I’ve come to recognize the eyes that burn, the very last of the body’s light to go out.
“You will have only one story,” she had said. “You’ll write your one story many ways. Don’t ever worry about story. You have only one.”
I think this is a really awesome
observationabout writing because Ann Patchett has also said that all of her books are the same story in different manifestations. Whenever I write I find a lot of the same themes bubbling up as well in different projects. This quote help me realize how universal that is!
Do I understand that hurt my children feel? I think I do, though they might claim otherwise. But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can’t even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.
