Donovan

“Celebrity, even the modest sort that comes to writers, is an unhelpful exercise in self-consciousness. Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being ‘somebody,’ to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his over animation. One can either see or be seen. Most of the best fiction is written out of early impressions, taken in before the writer became conscious of himself as a writer. The best seeing is done by the hunted and the hunter, the vulnerable and the hungry; the ‘successful’ writer acquires a film over his eyes. His eyes get fat. Self-importance is a thickened, occluding form of self-consciousness. The binge, the fling, the trip — all attempt to shake the film and get back under the dining room table, with a child's beautifully clear eyes.”
― John Updike, Self-Consciousness

“Why study authenticity if not to seek it? Try to ring some last truth from that word before it's so leeched of meaning that becomes a word casing, a shell without a bullet. A term that can be used only inside quotation marks.”
― Jennifer Egan, The Candy House

“Being part white was something he'd just assumed. Even if he hadn't been white, everyone was raised with whiteness as the standard.....so you had it in you, even if you didn't. It was the background sound you only ever noticed got turned off in rare moments when the spotlight shifted temporarily.”
― Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars

“When it comes to the rich, things are very rarely called by their true names”
― Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog