Cora

“Young writers find out what kinds of writers they are by experiment. If they choose from the outset to practice exclusively a form of writing because it is praised in the classroom or otherwise carries appealing prestige, they are vastly increasing the risk inherent in taking up writing in the first place.”
― John McPhee

“Nothing could be less conducive to reaching an art-work than critical remarks:it's always simply a matter of more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Everything cannot be so easily grasped and conveyed as we are generally led to believe; most events are unconveyable and come to pass in a space that no word has ever penetrated; more unconveyable than all else are art-works, whose mysterious existences, whose lives run alongside ours, which perishes, whereas theirs endure.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“Some people-and I am one of them-hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

“There's nothing so magnificent - for making others feel you - as to have no imagination.”
― Henry James