Kitty Johnson > Kitty's Quotes

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”
― Ann Lamott

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”
― Annie Dillard

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you have a crush on your best friend’s brother when you’re eleven—flat chested and too shy to say boo to a goose—he is always going to see you that way.”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters

“I suppose the great dream of this writing lark is that the books continuously get newer and deeper and stronger. Or at least we hope that we’re not repeating ourselves…we have to be ‘continually jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.’ I think that’s what happened with this book. I saw a big cliff and I took off...I’m still flying, still catching the updrafts, still trying to understand it.”
― – Colum McCann