Marie

“The norms of fiction, the reader of Sleepless Nights might well conclude, are after all a constriction, or at least a superfluity: Since to live is to make fiction, what need to disguise the world as another, alternate one? At the same time strict reportage, with its prohibition against invention, imposes its own aesthetically intolerable demands. Sleepless Nights, an alchemical tour de force, reports by inventing and invents by reporting. It continues to remind us how the novel can become richer by permitting itself the resources of essay, journal, memoir, prose poem, chronicle. It is a commonplace that every book needs to find its own form, but how many do?”
― Elizabeth Hardwick, Sleepless Nights

“The most dangerous thing we can do with intelligence is to let it speak without being both chastised and informed by wisdom. For if we let it speak without the constraints and forbearance of wisdom, we will destroy ourselves. And in doing so, we will be so caught up in our ‘intelligence’ that we won’t even realize that it’s ‘us’ that’s killing ‘us.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“What must it be like to be so genuine, so fragile, your entire world of thoughts so easy to read on your face? I couldn’t even imagine.”
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

“We wage battle with our traumas each day, individually and, to a broader extent, collectively. Too often we are dragged from our sleep by inner skirmishes that invade and dominate our emotions, rile the inner snipers, and hold our bodies hostage to our histories. Often we are ambushed by an unseen enemy from within and for the untrained, unconditioned warrior, there is no safety. We hide, isolate, avoid known landmines, and shield ourselves with alcohol, other drugs, spending, raging, sex, gambling, risk taking. At least, for a moment, the terror dissolves and we can attach ourselves to a sense of safety. Even in the full knowledge that it's all temporary.”
― Louise Sutherland-Hoyt