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"A lot of people who read my novel 'Smog City' ask me why I never killed off either of the two main characters. To be honest, it's because I've given them life. Not literally of course, but since I spent so much time developing and creating my characters, they've ended up with complex personalities, in fact they're almost sentient in a way, and to write them off as dead would be like killing a close friend to me."
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"A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction."
Author Name
Personal Development
"We write every day, we fight every day, we think and scheme and dream a little dream every day. manuscripts pile up in the kitchen sink, run-on sentences dangle around our necks. we plant purple prose in our gardens and snip the adverbs only to thread them in our hair. we write with no guarantees, no certainties, no promises of what might come and we do it anyway. this is who we are."
Author Name
Personal Development
"It will be sent that, although the writer's love is verily a jealous love, it is a jealousy for and not of his creatures. He will tolerate no interference either with them or between them and himself."
Author Name
Personal Development
"An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Authors, he thought. Even the sane ones are nuts."
Author Name
Personal Development
"A writer always begins by being too complicated-he's playing at several games at once."
Author Name
Personal Development
"It was useless trying to explain to Cecila that poetry wasn't a commodity, that it could never be bought or sold, that it was, in fact, unteansferrable, remaining forever a part of the one who wrote it."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I didn't really escape that gravity until I moved 300 miles south to go to college at 18, where authorship no longer seemed something liable to induce vengeful punishment."
Author Name
Personal Development
"We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens."
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"Friends are like the stars that glow in the sky... you don't always see them, but you know they're always there overhead, and even when it's cloudy, snowy or stormy, even when the power goes out and you're trapped in darkness, they'll always find a way to shine through to you."
Inspirational
"Sometimes, without effort, you live in the moment. You don't regret the past or worry about the future, and in that moment everything flashes before your eyes , a clear snapshot of what has to be done, and everything pauses."
Presence
"Alecto— what do you think would happen if people found out about you? Your abilities, your life, Mearth's super 8 films, those powers of yours— how would they react?" I don't know, said Alecto, "but ordinary people like a show, especially when it's a disturbing one. They enjoy seeing misery— probably because it allows them to pretend that they themselves are not so miserable, too. Also, they would probably find out about you, how you know about Personifications, how you saw the films— they would put us in cages and throw peanuts at us, I guess." All joking aside, Alecto.—"Who is joking, Mandy Valems?"
Psychology
“Mandy, I hardly think this was appropriate, not after—you know—after the funeral. We haven't had the money for any of your weird little games, and I was hoping you'd be more mature now that Jud's gone,” her father had added disappointedly.
“How much'd that cake cost you?”
“It's paid for,” Mandy had argued, but her voice had sounded tiny in the harbour wind. “I used the cash from my summer job at Frenchy's last year, and I—it was my birthday, Dad!”
“You can't even be normal about this one thing, can you?” her father had complained.
Mandy hadn't cried; she'd only stared back knowingly, her voice shaky. “I'm normal.”
Family
"Amanda, you finally decided to answer the phone, her mom exclaimed after picking up at the first ring. "Where've you been, what've you been up to?"Mom, do you remember when I was a kid, I had a friend, he was a Personification of the Sydney Tar Ponds, sort of my imaginary friend? Mandy asked."No, what in the name of god are you on about? her mom sighed in exasperation."Remember? Only I could see him, but he was real and he was my best friend when I was eighteen? Mandy insisted."No, I don't remember Alecto Sydney Steele at all, said her mom all too quickly."
Friendship
"This is my home, Cape Breton is my home, and I don't know if I really want to leave it as much as I might think and I'm sort of scared to leave it all behind, everything I've lived with, I have so many memories of all the things I've done here and I'm afraid if I leave, I might lose all my memories."
Life
"Mandy would much rather have imaginary friends who were real than real friends who were imaginary."
Imagination
"How promising today's generation is. They can whip out their cellular phones like sheep, instantly take a million digital photos of their cat and then just delete them. But I'd like to see these kids try to artfully use a traditional film camera or make a super 8 home movie. Traditional film takes integrity, nostalgia, effort, patience and imagination - things that the 21st century has very little of. Everything these days, even a superior medium like film photography with an extensively vivid history and an iconic meaning, is becoming disposable in this age."
Art
"Terrell is weeping soundlessly, and despite the guard's objection, he raises his hand up to the glass. Geraldine mimics him, lining her fingers up with his. It's lonely to think that one little sheet of glass could create such a thick distance between them, but all the same, regardless of what he's done, he's still one of the closest friends she has."
Friendship
"She dug into one of the boxes, finding clay angels she'd made in art class when she was seven years old. She found plastic swans on strings and red crystal cardinals. She found a blue-and-white rocking horse covered in glitter. She found a porcelain Santa Claus. She found that she couldn't figure out where the hell time had gone."
Time
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