“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
―
―
“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
― Ulysses
― Ulysses
“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”
― Lolita
― Lolita
“His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.”
― A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
― A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
The Penguin Press
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Welcome to our Goodreads Group for The Penguin Press! We like to say that we publish "ideas that matter and storytelling that lasts," and some of our ...more
The Modern Library 100 Best Novels Challenge
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If you are working at reading your way through the Modern Library's Top 100 novels, join us! We will read one-two books per month together (depending ...more
Jenny’s 2025 Year in Books
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