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“God does not forgive the sins He makes us commit.”
― José Saramago, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

“Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra—they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is covered in open novels. I read lines to swim in a certain sensibility, to strike a particular note, to encourage rigour when I’m too sentimental, to bring verbal ease when I’m syntactically uptight. I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka, as roughage. If your aesthetic has become so refined it is stopping you from placing a single black mark on white paper, stop worrying so much about what Nabokov would say; pick up Dostoyevsky, patron saint of substance over style.”
― Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

“I’ve been prepared for almost anything; except absence, except silence.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye

“We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying.”
― Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See