A Seperated Brethren Reconciled

"Another belief of mine: that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise."

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

"Be in the World, Not of the World—Kind of like Lucky Charms cereal: there are lots of pretty marshmallows in with the cereal, but they’re not the same. So live with the cereal, but remember: you’re a pretty marshmallow."

"But now I saw the real problem with chasing after a man. It wasn’t a matter of being unseemly or socially unacceptable or not playing the game right. It was just this: if I chase him, I’ll never really know if he cares enough to chase me."

"

Society conspires against her from early infancy. Her brain is steadily filled with plaster until it sets: ‘If you’re not married by the time you’re twenty-five, you’ll have good reason to be ashamed’; ‘if you laugh, you won’t look dignified’ ; ‘if your face betrays your feelings, you’ll look coarse’; ‘if you mention the existence of a single body hair, you’re repulsive’ ; ‘if a boy kisses you on the cheek in public, you’re a whore’; if you enjoy eating, you’re a pig’; ‘if you take pleasure in sleeping, you’re no better than a cow’; and so on.

These precepts would be merely anecdotal if they weren’t taken so much to heart.

"

"Sometimes you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read that book."

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."

"Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn’t carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life."

"For it would seem - her case proved it - that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver."