A Nazif

“Explaining something makes it go away, so to speak; what's important is left after you have explained everything else.”
― Edward Gorey, Ascending Peculiarity: Edward Gorey on Edward Gorey

“There are very few professions in which people just sit down and think hard for five or six hours a day all by themselves. Of course it's why you want to become a writer — because you have the liberty to do that, but once you have the liberty you also have the obligation to do it.”
― Tobias Wolff

“Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.”
― Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life

“The very act of writing assumes, to begin with, that someone cares to hear what you have to say. It assumes that people share, that people can be reached, that people can be touched and even in some cases changed. So many of the things in our world lead us to despair. It seems to me that the final symptom of despair is silence, and that storytelling is one of the sustaining arts; it’s one of the affirming arts. A writer may have a certain pessimism in his outlook, but the very act of being a writer seems to me to be an optimistic act.”
― Tobias Wolff