Gen

“If we knew ahead of time what was going to happen we'd be -- we'd be like the people on Camazotz, with no lives of our own, with everything all planned and done for us.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time

“We all recognize grief in moments that should be celebrations; it is the salt in the pudding. Didn't Roman generals hire slaves to march beside them in a triumphant parade and remind them that they too would die? Even your narrator, one morning after what should have been a happy occasion, was found shivering at the end of the bed (spouse: "I really wish you weren't crying right now"). Don't little children, awakened one morning and told, "Now you're five!" - don't they wail at the universe's descent into chaos? The sun slowly dying, the spiral arm spreading, the molecules drifting apart second by second toward our inevitable heat death - shouldn't we all wail to the stars?”
― Andrew Sean Greer, Less

“You're only who you really are when you're doing what you really want. I am so much myself, I could never be anyone else.”
― Gabe Habash, Stephen Florida

“The only happiness you have is writing something new, in the middle of the night, armpits damp, heart pounding, something no one has yet seen. You have only those brief, fragile, untested moments of exhilaration when you know: you are a genius.”
― Lorrie Moore