Atlanta

“I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering, necessarily a vicarious experience, more like a sort of “generalization” of suffering. Does this make sense? We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside.”
― David Foster Wallace

“All you need in the world is love and laughter. That's all anybody needs. To have love in one hand and laughter in the other.”
― August Wilson

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”
― Elbert Hubbard

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain