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"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."
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"Authorship of anything apart from God is nothing more than a tragedy in the making."

"An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere."

"I am a strong believer in the tyranny, the dictatorship, the absolute authority of the writer."

"A writer always begins by being too complicated-he's playing at several games at once."

"Authoring a book is the sound of your voice around the world."

"What they, in their innocence, cannot comprehend is that a properly constituted, healthy, decent man never writes, acts, or composes."

"You know, it's hard work to write a book. I can't tell you how many times I really get going on an idea, then my quill breaks. Or I spill ink all over my writing tunic."

"We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship."

"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."

"I have a handful of prayers that I pray all the time... One is that God will put my books into the right hands at the right times. I've prayed this prayer thousands of times, and God has answered it in dramatic fashion countless times. The right book in the right hands at the right time can save a marriage, avert a mistake, demand a decision, plant a seed, conceive a dream, solve a problem, and prompt a prayer. That is why I write. And that's why, for me, a book sold is not a book sold; a book sold is a prayer answered. I don't know the name and situation of every reader, but God does, and that's all that matters."
Explore more quotes by Tahereh Mafi


"Red was ruby, green was fluorescent, yellow was simply incandescent. Color was life. Color was everything.Color, you see, was the universal sign of magic."


"His lips soften into a smile that cracks apart my spine. He repeats my name like the word amuses him. Entertains him. Delights him."


"We've been shattered and reconstructed, told to make an effort every single day to pretend we still function the way we're supposed to. But it's a lie, it's all a lie; every person, place, thing and idea is a lie. I do not function properly. I am nothing more than the consequence of catastrophe."


"Because it's so difficult to fight what you cannot control and right now I can't even control my own imagination as it grips my hair and drags me into the dark."
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