Austin Siegemund-Broka > Quotes

“Fiction comes from truth. It is a wonderful, imaginative, flourishing thing grown from a seed of real feelings, real desires, real fears. No artist ever creates from nothing. We work from what we've experienced, inspired by the unique piece of the world we see. It's why art cannot be replicated.”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, The Roughest Draft

“Forever is about reaching into the future, into years far away and unknowable. Always is about every second of every day. It's as far reaching as forever, it just starts sooner.”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, The Roughest Draft

“There's no truth to these pages, but the trick of fiction is to make you think there is. I let myself fall for it as often as I can.”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, The Roughest Draft

“If I was going to commit to someone, I wanted him to be worth the worry, worth the part of me I was going to give him.”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, If I'm Being Honest

“It can be both. Fiction is fiction, and it's real. They're not opposites. They live within each other.”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, The Roughest Draft

“Writing is where our--where everyone's--purest truths lie. On the page, thoughts and feelings can be expressed without interference, without ineloquences or fear or fumbling. There's no room for turning back or losing your nerve. Only one thing remains--what you want to communicate.”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, The Roughest Draft

“It’s not hard to be with someone you love. It’s the most natural thing in the world,”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, If I'm Being Honest

“I could wither under his words and feel inferior or I could rise to them and become a better version of myself.”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, If I'm Being Honest

“Forgiveness is the release that washes the poison from my veins, the anger and envy I could never get rid of no matter how often I apologized. It's impossibly, beautifully easy.”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, If I'm Being Honest

“Elle wasn’t a perfect friend. Our friendship wasn’t perfect. I know that now in a way I didn’t before. But just because it wasn’t perfect doesn’t mean it’s worth giving up on.”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, If I'm Being Honest

“I don't want some perfectly crafted love story. I can't live up to it! There's no final page in life, no point where we kiss and everything is happily-ever-after. We can't be contained in neat phrases or nicely designed covers. We're not characters. We're people I couldn't be with someone who only wanted the story version. I wanted -I want- something real, and I'm not convinced you can handle real.”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, The Roughest Draft

“what if the height of their passion is gardening or making pasta? What does it have to be sex?”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, The Roughest Draft

“For once, I want to live the pain instead of dressing it in fictional clothing. It might heal cleaner. It might make me better.”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, The Roughest Draft

“We've written the rough draft of our love together, the draft with loose ends, unfinished edges, mistakes every other page. But every writer knows there's magic in revisions, where your work changes from a manuscript into a book. Where intentions, emotions, missed connections coalesce into something complete. It's where what you mean to say becomes what you have said. The characters deepen, the details shine, the prose sparkles. Suddenly, from nothing, you can find your story. We're in the revision now, Nathan and me. The second draft. Each next one will only improve, becoming more nuanced, more honest, more profound. More us.”
― Austin Siegemund-Broka, The Roughest Draft