Ross

“I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“Do you remember how this life of yours longed in childhood to belong to the grown-ups? I can see that it now longs to move on from them and is drawn to those who are greater yet. That is why it does not cease to be difficult, but also why it will not cease to grow.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true — not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. “All is vanity.” ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon’s wisdom yet.”
― Herman Melville

“If living is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.”
― Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel