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“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
― On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
― On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“I heard an old man speak once, someone who had been sober for fifty years, a very prominent doctor. He said that he’d finally figured out a few years ago that his profound sense of control, in the world and over his life, is another addiction and a total illusion. He said that when he sees little kids sitting in the back seat of cars, in those car seats that have steering wheels, with grim expressions of concentration on their faces, clearly convinced that their efforts are causing the car to do whatever it is doing, he thinks of himself and his relationship with God: God who drives along silently, gently amused, in the real driver's seat.”
― Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
― Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
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“Oh, but my stomach, she is like a waterbed covered in flannel. When I lie on my side in bed, my stomach lies politely beside me, like a puppy.”
― Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
― Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
“When, during the course of an interview for The New Yorker, I told the interviewer (Mark Singer) that I believed stories are found things, like fossils in the ground, he said that he didn't believe me. I replied that that was fine, as long as he believed that I believe it. And I do. Stories aren't souvenir tee-shirts or GameBoys. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible. Sometimes the fossil you uncover is small; a seashell. Sometimes it's enormous, a Tyrannosaurus Rex with all those gigantic ribs and grinning teeth. Either way, short story or thousand-page whopper of a novel, the techniques of excavation remain basically the same.”
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Steph’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Steph’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,667 books
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5,000 friends
105 books
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99 friends
333 books
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346 friends
25 books
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91 friends
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36 friends
1,290 books
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48 friends
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