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“All I do know, for certain, after 53 years in this business, is that writers who sincerely think that their language can represent reality ought to be plumbers.”
―
―
“Being or nothing, that is the question. Ascending, descending, coming, going, a man does so much that in the end he disappears.”
― Zazie in the Metro
― Zazie in the Metro
“The Tuesday scowls, the Wednesday growls, the Thursday curses, the Friday howls, the Saturday snores, the Sunday yawns, the Monday morns, the Monday morns. The whacks, the moans, the cracks, the groans, the welts, the squeaks, the belts, the shrieks, the pricks, the prayers, the kicks, the tears, the skelps, and the yelps.”
― Watt
― Watt
“Be sure to enjoy language, experiment with ways of talking, be exuberant even when you don't feel like it because language can make your world a better place to live.”
― Pillow Talk in Europe and Other Places
― Pillow Talk in Europe and Other Places
“From the moment I start a new novel, life’s just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there’s still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied. I begin to say the book’s no good, far inferior to my earlier ones, until I’ve wrung torture out of every page, every sentence, every word, and the very commas begin to look excruciatingly ugly. Then, when it’s finished, what a relief! Not the blissful delight of the gentleman who goes into ecstasies over his own production, but the resentful relief of a porter dropping a burden that’s nearly broken his back . . . Then it starts all over again, and it’ll go on starting all over again till it grinds the life out of me, and I shall end my days furious with myself for lacking talent, for not leaving behind a more finished work, a bigger pile of books, and lie on my death-bed filled with awful doubts about the task I’ve done, wondering whether it was as it ought to have been, whether I ought not to have done this or that, expressing my last dying breath the wish that I might do it all over again!”
― The Masterpiece
― The Masterpiece
The Kindred Spirits
— 300 members
— last activity Sep 23, 2025 07:28AM
Place to meet and talk about anything.
The BURIED Book Club
— 947 members
— last activity Feb 27, 2026 06:22PM
TODAY BOOKS ARE NOT BURNED. THEY ARE BURIED. WE SHALL UNEARTH THEM.
Completists' Club
— 544 members
— last activity Mar 25, 2026 12:59PM
A group for those attempting to complete, or who have completed, the canons of their favourite writers. Share your canon-wide knowledge and opinion wi ...more
Alexander Theroux Ville
— 118 members
— last activity Jan 07, 2026 03:01PM
The Theroux revival continues. This group counts as a village forum for discussing the works of Alexander Theroux. Both scholars and the naive and cur ...more
Dalkey Archive Press reads
— 155 members
— last activity Apr 18, 2020 05:39AM
Hi everyone, Join our Backlist of the Month discussions! What is Backlist of the month, you ask? It's something we'll tell you all about on Faceboo ...more
MJ’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at MJ’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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