Rattle

“When you experience writer's block, it means your creative child is throwing herself on the floor and refusing to cooperate. What do you do under these circumstances? Do you try to compel your child, kicking and screaming, to do what she would not? Do you send her to her room without dinner? Do you give her a number of logical reasons why she ought to
cooperate? Or do you try to find out why she doesn't want to in the first place?”
― Victoria Nelson, On Writer's Block

“Many people find it difficult to head straight for their fun; something in them refuses to play. The barrier is not lack of willpower (did you ever need willpower, as a child, to make mud pies?), but a stronger and much more seductive emotion: hatred. Specifically, hatred of self.
Loving oneself—as opposed to the narcissism of being
in love with oneself, with all its attendant insecurities—is one of the most difficult life tasks to master, and it is integrally related to the creative process.”
― Victoria Nelson, On Writer's Block

“One can experience loneliness in two ways: by feeling lonely in the world or by feeling the loneliness of the world. Individual loneliness is a personal drama; one can feel lonely even in the midst of great natural beauty. An outcast in the world, indifferent to its being dazzling or dismal, self-consumed with triumphs and failures, engrossed in inner drama—such is the fate of the solitary. The feeling of cosmic loneliness, on the other hand, stems not so much from man's subjective agony as from an awareness of the world's isolation, of objective nothingness. It is as if all the splendors of this world were to vanish at once, leaving behind the dull monotony of a cemetery. Many are haunted by the vision of an abandoned world encased in glacial solitude, untouched by even the pale reflections of a crepuscular light. Who is more unhappy? He who feels his own loneliness or he who feels the loneliness of the world? Impossible to tell, and besides, why should I bother with a classification of loneliness? Is it not enough that one is alone?”
― Emil M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

“Try to teach them something, but they’ll never learn. Give them a job and they’ll steal your money. Give them an apartment and they’ll trash it, though they don’t even have to pay for it themselves,” said the cat sternly. “Good God,”
― Pajtim Statovci, My Cat Yugoslavia