--Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing
Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
--Virginia Woolf, A Room Of One's Own
Where would you like to go, what would you really like to do with your life?
See Istanbul, Port Said, Nairobi, Budapest. Write a book. Smoke too many cigarettes. Fall off a cliff but get caught in a tree halfway down. Get shot at a few times in a dark alley on a Morrocan midnight. Love a beautiful woman.
--Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.
--William Faulkner, Light In August
To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing -- the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.
--Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping