On Being A Rat Quotes

“When reading a book, one hopes it doesn’t turn into a painful process. Predictable is bad enough. Laborious is acceptable if the labor produces fruit. But with painfully bad writing, all one can do is grab a hatchet, slice off its head, and bury it.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“The setting sun threatened to consume me—it could have, you know. It would have been a beautiful death with an honorable eulogy: slain by a magnificent slice of piercing orange energy. I simply turned and walked away; I would live another day.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW OF SYLVIA PLATH

Conventions bleed my soul
squeeze me old
wear me grey
like a headstone in transit.

It’s tradition and form—
fear of the unknown—
driving me dead
in tight spaces darkly.

I cry aloud
but who can hear
when I stand alone
in the middle of an art show….”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“A writer hopes never to offend, but if he must, pray let him offend the gods before the reviewers.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Oh God, for a few who will love me in tiny ways every single day of my flashing existence. For a mere one or two who will treat me like the trash I am, who will love the smell of garbage and rummage through the bin of my failings to find the wrapped cheeseburger they can do without but consider long enough to get their taste buds used to the idea.
Oh for a melodious tongue to sing me a song about french fries.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Today I fed him right off the bat, and only checked Facebook twice.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Writing is making love under a crescent moon: I see shadows of what’s to come, and it’s enough; I have faith in what I can’t see and it’s substantiated by a beginning, a climax, an ending. And if it’s an epic novel in hand, I watch the sunrise amid the twigs and dewing grass; the wordplay is what matters.
Simply put, I’m in love, and any inconvenience is merely an afterthought.
The sun tips the horizon; the manuscript is complete. The author, full of profound exhaustion, lays his stylus aside. His labor of love stretches before him, beautiful, content, sleeping, until the next crescent moon stars the evening sky.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I’ve had a fountain pen surgically implanted in my left index finger to save trouble. My body is tattooed with line upon line of truth, fiction, and a not-always-pleasing mix of the two.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I don’t need to write. Madness or suicide are other options, though not nearly as compelling. But I want to create; I hope to create worlds in my own image, admittedly a self-centered plan. I want others to understand me better, pay more attention to me, like or love me for who I am. Maybe that’s it. Or maybe I should simply learn to say, “Let’s have lunch.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“This piece of earth I billet grows small. Bullets of time dart past, dropping shards of opportunity at my feet. And until the rift that surrounds my decaying body clamps shut—swallows me up like so many remains—I army on, simultaneously ignoring and saving my comrades in the hole.
Such is a writer’s life.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I read a book, am vortexed in with no escape; my face contorts, eyelids frost, breath comes short, body longs, heart stop-starts. Who’s to say too much won’t kill me? Who’s to say I care?”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Writing is a beast to tame, an energy to transform. Whip that toad into a prince and French kiss it to life. We start at the top but keep looking down, from macro to micro, from what could work to what does—but start with the dream. Nothing is real apart from the clouds, and all clouds pass with life in their wake—some rain thoughts.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Split your skull—a hatchet works well enough. Take a more delicate instrument—a scalpel, perhaps—and make a hand-sized slit; it doesn’t matter where. Reach in (no glove needed), plunge down to the very bottom, pinch the inside layer of membrane and yank, hard.
If it feels like you’ve just turned your brain inside out, you have. Writing is brain surgery, pure and simple.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“When I pour a bowl of Uncle Sam’s cereal, I never know if I should stand when I eat, salute it first, or simply hum the Star Spangled Banner between mouthfuls.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“I suck the words word-dry
to me, assimilated
orderly at breakeye speed
still hard and harder
softer then
line-lined book-dry
‘til not a drop
of water-blood
from oak and elm
and authored men
is left to whisper
“Read…”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“The Page awaits the Inspiration even as Inspiration roams the world of man, seeking a Page upon which to unfurl itself, body and soul, bare yet clothed in immortality if not immediacy.
And the gods said, “Let there be a Page, and many a Page,” and there was a Book. And we saw that the Book was good.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“If a book can save—redeem us from the mediocrity of the mundane—surely, there must be a God.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations

“Writing makes me hard, like a fisherman, and brown from the heat. Tossing out and reeling in is a job for visionaries and those with calloused hands.”
― Chila Woychik, On Being a Rat and Other Observations