Emma Roulette > Emma's Quotes

“I’ve gotten convinced that there’s something kind of timelessly vital and sacred about good writing. This thing doesn’t have that much to do with talent, even glittering talent... Talent’s just an instrument. It’s like having a pen that works instead of one that doesn’t. I’m not saying I’m able to work consistently out of the premise, but it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.”
― David Foster Wallace

“Never again shall I understand anything I say. Since how could I speak without the word lying for me? How could I speak except timidly like this: life just is for me. Life just is for me, and I don't understand what I'm saying. And so I adore it.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.

“Marine beings, when not affixed to the sea floor, adapt to a fluctuating or pelagic life,” Perseu studied on the afternoon of May 15, 192.
Heroic and empty, the citizen kept standing beside the open window. But in fact he could never transmit to anyone the extent to which he was harmonious, and even if he spoke, no word could convey the graciousness of his appearance: his extreme harmony was simply evident.
“Pelagic animals reproduce with profusion,” he said with hollow luminosity. Blind and glorious—that was all that could be known of him. . . .
“They feed on basic microvegetation, infusorials, etc.”
“Etc.!” he repeated brilliant, unconquerable. . . .
“This discoidal animal is formed according to the symmetry based on the number 4.”
That’s what it said! And the sun beat down on the dusty page: a cockroach was even climbing up the house across the street. . . . Then the boy said something as lustrous as a scarab:
“Pelagic beings reproduce with extraordinary profusion,” he finally exclaimed from memory.”
― Clarice Lispector, A Cidade Sitiada

“Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath