Janet Groth

“...he said apropos of nothing one day, "No talk about 'relationships,' understood?" I think I did have the presence of mind to ask, "Why?"
"It's a waste of time," he said. "The existentialists have it right. Whatever is the case, is. No amount of talk is going to change it. The only thing we have to feel responsible for to each other is to pay attention to what's happening between us. It either is or it isn't.”
― Janet Groth, The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker

“Then there was the shame of the writer who doesn't write. The me who carried within my breast in equal shares the conviction that I could write and the certainty that I could not. Here all the problems of shame over childhood inadequacy and adult insecurity and sexual insecurity ganged up to produce periodic bouts of thwarted attempts.”
― Janet Groth, The Receptionist: An Education at The New Yorker