Cybil

“The idea came to me complete from start to finish – a most unusual occurrence, as any writer will tell you, for ordinarily a story has to be struggled with, changed around and mixed up.”
― Philip Van Doren Stern

“A smile is the universal welcome.”
― Max Eastman, The Sense of Humor

“A spy, like a writer, lives outside the mainstream population. He steals his experience through bribes and reconstructs it.”
― John le Carré

“Whenever he saw his books in a store, he felt like he’d gotten away with something, said John Updike. Who also expressed the opinion that a nice person wouldn’t become a writer. The problem of self-doubt. The problem of shame. The problem of self-loathing. You once put it like this: When I get so fed up with something I’m writing that I decide to quit, and then, later, I find myself irresistibly drawn back to it, I always think: Like a dog to its vomit.”
― Sigrid Nunez, The Friend